


Bartholomew

by Frin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Humour, Intrigue, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:58:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 25,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2312093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frin/pseuds/Frin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It had been so long and now here was a familiar stranger who needed her help. Rose Tyler looked at the image on the screen and wondered, "What would the Doctor do?"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It had been nearly three years since she got trapped here forever, and it still hurt every day although she tried not to show it. She got on with work, a job she loved and excelled at, built a relationship with her biological stepfather and her full-biological half brother, and basically trod the slow path with as much joy as she could muster.

Mickey had long since given up, but they remained, and always would, firm friends.

Jackie nagged her gently, said that she shouldn’t spend the rest of her life waiting, that maybe getting out and making the effort would be a step in the right direction in finding that somebody special.

Rose never lost patience with her, merely listened and quietly declined. She had opened her soul to her mother that day on the beach. Her mother knew and she concluded from this that she didn’t have to explain herself. It was the easiest way. Jackie probably would have got more hope from the odd row.

So Rose was surprised that day when Pete called her out to the asylum. It wasn’t work related he had said and so she drove out of town, her sat-nav commanding her route.

The hospital was a beautiful Victorian building set in acres of meticulously maintained gardens and she breathed in the fresh air, enjoying the change of scenery.

"Rose!" Pete came out to the car park to greet her, a worried expression on his face.

Instantly, she was uneasy. “What is it?”

“Inside… I need to show you…” He led her to an office and sat down with her in front of a computer.

“What’s going on?”

“I got this call… Torchwood call… from Unit… this bloke has been under their care for quite some time now, seems human enough… but there are… discrepancies… looking into his biological make up, I can see wherein they probably lie… he is like you…”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you and Mick and your mum… he isn’t originally from here… not alien exactly… just a bit… off…”

“Well… I suppose a few people may have fallen through when the walls were at their thinnest? You said this wasn’t work-related.”

“It isn’t… look, Rose… he’s virtually empty… he can speak, just about and very rarely… but he has nothing in his noggin… it’s as if every memory he ever had has been wiped.”

“And… what does that have to do with me, exactly?” Pete didn’t reply; he stared at Rose as if weighing it all up and then he clicked a button on the computer in front of them and a photograph flicked up on the monitor.

Rose gasped. There, on the screen, was the face she had yearned to see, the face she dreamt about, the face she loved so completely. “What?”

“It’s uncanny, isn’t it?”

“Is it… I mean… who is he?” Rose was clicking away at the keyboard, deftly bringing up all the data they had on him. “Not him…” she said softly and flicked the image back on... studying his face.

“Not him… really? He didn’t throw himself through the void… drive himself mad to get to you?”

“The Doctor wouldn’t do that.”

“But look at him!”

“One heart… he only has one heart…”

“Well, maybe something happened to the other... we could run tests?”

“Why are we involved?”

“Mickey was over at Unit, saw some posters… it was him who told me… as soon as Unit got a whiff of us having something to do with him they were after us taking responsibility. The man has no memory, but he isn’t mad, he just needs to be understood… taken care of…” 

Rose stared at him for some time, hands frozen on the keyboard, a muscle twitching in her cheek. Finally she spoke with as much control as she could.“You think I should take care of him?” 

Pete paled visibly at her tone; he was only too used to it from another female member of his family and he shook his head violently before he responded. “I didn’t mean it like that… look, when Mickey showed me the pictures, I knew you'd want to know… how angry you would be if I buried it… you say it isn’t him… but there really is something off about it all, don’t you think? I just thought you might know the way to deal with this?”

“Know? You’re asking me to… to what… help a man without memory on his way? A man who is identical to the man that I… to someone who was… I really don’t think I can…”

“No… no… I should have thought… I suppose part of me thought it might be… but you would know… out of everyone, you would know…” Rose didn’t answer him. “I suppose I’ll get him onto a programme… far away and tucked away… Torchwood Trust was set up for people like him… I just felt you should know… I was wrong.” Again, there was no reply and shortly after that Pete got up, presumably to set the ball rolling in a different direction.

“I suppose I could just… you know… meet him… just to make sure… you know… seed of doubt an’ all that?” she said softly, and he turned back and responded equally as softly.

“It wouldn’t do any harm, would it?”

“No… but not now… not yet… I’d like some information… maybe I could get a copy of his files, do some reading?”

“I can sort that…”

“It isn’t him… and it isn’t cos of the way he… I just… well, what would the Doctor do?”

“Exactly…”

“Deserves a chance…”

“Yes… quite right too…” Rose flinched at the words and quickly studied his face to see if he knew what he was saying. There was nothing but hopeful compassion there.

***********

Much later, when she was back at her flat, she flicked on her laptop and accessed the unknown man’s files. He was now part of her case load and she had diversified her job for the face that she longed for. She was now officially a welfare officer for alien or parallel immigrants. Bit rich considering she was actually one of these herself, but then she supposed that this was something anyone in this situation might identify with, so maybe she was actually qualified for the job? They (Jackie, Mickey and herself) had all had Pete to help them, others may not have been so lucky. Now evidently, they weren’t.

There was little information about where the stranger (who they had called Bartholomew by his request) had come from. He had turned up in the middle of the night, grubby and wearing dirty clothes too big for him. He had been sullen and closed but read the Asylum sign and settled on the hospital's name as his own.

He had few possessions, but everything he owned or had been wearing was stored away so she would be able to search for… for what? She shook herself and continued reading.

At first he had lain in his cell staring into space as if he were a vegetable and had even had to be fed. Gradually, and over the months, he seemed to become more and more aware. There was footage of him having a nightmare, his body thrashing in the thin bed, and the screams must have echoed pitifully about that old building.

Drugging him only made him manic. He gibbered and begged and threatened until he submitted and slept until the drugs wore off.

Rose was familiar with this. He was a tormented soul, and obviously the memories he no longer had were so bad that they still haunted him even now.

Rose read every scrap of information on the man, and by the small hours of the morning she had made up her mind and decided that she would visit him. She tried to convince herself this was purely professional and, even in her groggy head at four in the morning; she knew that this didn’t quite ring true.


	2. Chapter 2

She was dressed in her Torchwood uniform, an I.D badge clearly marking her name and indicating she was a Welfare Officer.

He was wandering around the rose gardens in pyjamas and slippers and she got a shock when he was first pointed out to her. She hadn’t expected a beard and this made it almost too easy for the detached frame of mind she was supposed to have to become the truth.

He looked at her blankly as he bent to smell a particularly beautiful specimen, closing his eyes and breathing in the aroma and she, despite the beard, despite knowing that it couldn’t be him, felt her pulse quicken at the sight of it. 

“You like roses?” she asked him softly and he turned to her, his eyes flicking up and down her in what appeared to be some kind of an appraisal.

“Well… solid old plant is the rose… useful too… has valuable properties… good for the heart, the skin, its been known to withhold age for a little longer… good for the digestive system… some say it can even aid the destiny of true love… me, I like the smell of them….” Rose leaned forward and inhaled the sweet smell of the rose he now indicated and he took the opportunity to read her badge.

“S’nice…”

“So… Ms R Tyler… Welfare Officer… were you looking for me or are you lost?”

“No… I came to see you… I’ve been assigned your case…”

“Ah… you're here on a professional basis as I feared… you are my Welfare Officer? And I need one of those, do I?”

“Well… your treatment can go no further here… the medics believe that your best option is to get you integrated into the real world… your memories are lost, time to start making new ones… I’m here to guide you along the way…”

“You’re here to hold my hand?” Rose faltered at the words and then nodded because however much such simple words might hurt, they were plainly very true.

“I’m to be integrated into society… how very, very daunting… I don’t know who to pity more!”

“It’ll be a gradual thing… no hurry… Torchwood Trust will pay for your stay here while we work on getting you ready to make your way in this world…”

“You speak as if this isn’t my world… and who are Torchwood?”

“Just the trust I work for… we specialise in… in your type…”

“My type? Am I so different to you?”

“I meant memory loss…”

“Ah… of course… I am a type, a pigeon hole to be filed into! Is there some kind of memory loss club I can join?”

“Sorry?”

“We’d have nothing to talk about, though would we?”

“Sir… Mr Bartholomew… if you aren’t up to this, we can leave it… like I said, there’s no rush…”

“I’m sorry… I was being sarcastic… I find it passes the time… it isn’t such a wonderful thing to discover that you have no memory of who you are. Can I offer you some tea, Ms Tyler?”

“You know what, that’s sounds like an excellent idea and the name is Rose…”

He regarded the rose garden with a raised brow and nodded, “how very apt… well I ‘m very pleased to meet you Rose Tyler, even if I am just part of a days work…”

They sat outside his room, a wooden table and chairs just outside the French windows and he poured the tea that an orderly had begrudgingly bought them. He had smiled all through the deliverance of the tray, but had had no response. It didn’t seem to bother him and, after loading it with sugar, he sipped at his tea happily and eyed her over his mug.

“Right, then… where were we?” she said eventually and he lowered the mug and leaned forward.

“Something about integrating me, I think…” Rose could feel herself, blushing as the man’s tongue whipped from his mouth and swiped a drop of tea from the side of his beard. She nodded, coughed and shuffled the papers she had armed herself with.

“Yes… right… we haven’t much data on your skills, I mean we know that you are obviously quite… well… you know… well educated…”

“I do appear on the clever side, I have to admit… sounds a little pompous, I haven’t much to go on… but information hasn’t seemed to pass me by, just my personal self… I don’t know I know things, I just say them and then realise… I actually do…”

“But as far as making your way in the world, Mr Bartholomew… I mean, you would need to qualify all over again…”

“Considering that I don’t know what I was before, that doesn’t really bother me… when they were assessing my levels of intelligence they explained as much… I just don’t know what I want to be qualified for… and please, Bartholomew is fine… they called me Smith, just a tad anonymous, I suppose that’s possibly why I plumped for Bartholomew… it was early days and I was a little out of it back then… Bartholomew Smith sort of stuck!”

“It’s a good name… different. Well as part of this process, we can help you discover what your field might be…”

“When do we begin all this then?”

“Well, there are a few tests, basics… easy stuff… do you have access to a computer here?” 

“Don’t be daft… it’s a mental hospital!”

“But you’re in recovery?”

“It seems, most patients of my level are discharged and home by this frame of mind… I don’t know where home is…”

“Well, we can sort that too… I was under the impression you were comfortable here?”

“I am… but I’m rather in the way… resented by some of the staff because there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“But you can cook… you know, look after yourself… keep clean?”

“Cook? I expect so… I mean, how hard can it be? I can brush my teeth… the usual… they won’t supply me with razors, against hospital policy and I absolutely refuse to let them shave me…”

“I’ll bring you in a razor next time, they don’t have to know… and we’ll have to find a way of getting you out of here and onto the next level…”

“Sounds like a game of some kind… and when will next time be, exactly?”

“Well… I need to find out what we can put into place for you regarding accommodation while we assess your potential… lets make an appointment…”

“There was I forgetting that this is a professional visit… I was beginning to feel like you were my friend…”

“I am your friend Bartholomew… but, you do need help with this and that’s why I’m here…”

“Bet you say that to all the amnesiacs!” Rose laughed out loud. “You’re beautiful…” he said quite without thought and immediately she stopped and straightened herself. “Sorry… crossed a line there… still learning… got slapped by one of the nurses a while back… it really isn’t okay to state the obvious sometimes…”

“Most of the time it is… but, perhaps not in this situation?” Rose opened up her diary and flicked through the mostly empty pages. “How about next week?”

“A week? Seriously, I have to stay here another whole week without seeing a face that doesn't disapprove of me?”

“I need time to sort out an alternative, Bartholomew.”

“My life feels like one big alternative at the moment… I’ll go insane if I have to stay here much longer!”

“Well, you’re in the right place, then, aren’t you?” she said getting up and then she shook her head, “I’ll see what I can do.”

When she got back in her car, she took out her diary and wrote the word ‘razor’ on the current date. Then she looked back at the beautiful building, smiled sadly, shook her head again and drove off.


	3. Chapter 3

“You have to keep still if you want me to do it!” Rose pushed his head back into position and brandished the scissors at his chin. He eyed them and grinned, leaning back and allowing her to carry on trimming his unruly beard.

“Is this a common occurrence in your line of work?”

“Sorry?”

“Shaving strange men with no name?”

“You have a name… it might not be your first given name, but I happen to like it. And this… this is a first…”

“So, how come you’re doing it then?”

“Cos you were makin’ a pig’s ear of it!” Rose continued to trim the hair away and he watched her unaware of the loop the loops her stomach was undergoing.

“Do you know me?” He asked suddenly and she faltered mid-trim.

“Know you?”

“Yes… it seems like you’re very comfortable with me and yet you can see my medical history, not so very long ago I was demented… dangerous… and yet, you’re happy to be here doing such a domesticated thing!”

“No… I don’t know you…” she said quietly.

“And the chemistry between us… whoops, bit forward… is that alright? Don’t want to cross lines.”

“Ch… chemistry?”

“Is it just me… been here a while now… maybe it is me… but I thought… no…”

“Shut up… it definitely isn’t one sided, but that don’t mean anything… you know? Any… way… should be just about right to shave… you can manage that?”

“Oh, I should think so… I mean… how hard can it be?”

Ten minutes later Rose was leaning over him again using the razor slowly, careful not to cut him again. His discarded t-shirt covered in blood from the wound he had administered to himself lay at their feet. He sat as still as could be in the chair while she moved about him. Her left leg was inbetween his legs and she was finding his naked torso very distracting. Carefully taking off the remnants of his moustache, her tongue levelled itself on her upper lip and she didn’t notice his eyes widen.

“Keep still or you’ll lose you nose!” she hissed as he shifted in his seat. “There… you can rinse it off now.” She stepped back and he made a bolt for the little bathroom attached to his room.

There was the sigh of the taps and then silence.

“Alright?” Rose called after what seemed more than enough time.

His head appeared at the door. “Side burns?”

“Oh… I thought… I rather like... I mean, do you want me to….?”

“I wasn’t expecting them, that’s all; they look sort of alright though… I’ll keep them for a bit; see how I get on with them.” He emerged from the bathroom rubbing his newly shaved and pink face in a thick white towel. “What do you think?” 

Rose felt as if the world suddenly stopped spinning, her knees buckled slightly and she grabbed the chest of drawers beside her to steady herself. He was completely identical to the man she had said goodbye to on the beach all those years ago and he was completely clueless to this.

“You alright?” he asked swooping forward and grabbing her arm to help her steady herself.

“Yeah... bit heady… it’s so hot in here…”

“You look like you've just seen a ghost… come on, sit down, I’ll get you some water.”

Rose sipped her drink slowly as he sat opposite her looking worried and, was that, vaguely amused?

“Sorry… don’t know what came over me…” she muttered not quite meeting his eye.

He shook his head and moved over to the chest of drawers where he got out another white t shirt and pulled it over his head. His hair was a little long and he had to reach up and pull the ends of it through the neck hole. “Bit long… not sure I like it like that…”

“Well, when you get out you can go for a haircut, yeah?”

“When I get out…”

“So, as I was saying, these safe houses… their a little unusual… I mean have you heard of a half-way house?”

“Am I a criminal?”

“No… these aren’t like that; they’re what my company set up to help… immigrants… to integrate here.”

“Immigrant… you see me as an immigrant… where have I come from then?”

“What… well… no, not you, unless we can assume that you have migrated from your memory… it’s hard to place you exactly and I felt that it was the best place for you.”

“But, who lives there, then? What immigrants are you talking of?”

“They’re fine; nobody to worry about and you’ll be self-contained anyway…”

“I should hope so… why do I get the impression you’re keeping things from me?”

“Because there is so much and I don’t want to overload you, let it be gradual, yeah?”

“I’m all for taking things nice and slowly, but to be kept in the dark, that’s another thing.”

“I’m not keeping you in the dark… let’s just get you there and then I’ll explain. So where are your clothes, I take it you didn’t arrive in pyjamas, did you?”

“My clothes were falling off me, I must have lost some weight, either that or I stole them.”

“Where are they?”

“Not sure, they bought them to show me in a bid to help me remember and then took them away. Must be in storage.”

“I’ll find them, I mean you might want them… I’ll get some clothes sorted out for you. You’ve been in pyjamas for all this time?”

“I’m very institutionalised, its going to take a lot of integration. Surely that would be reintegration?”

“Re would imply that you were here before… you have a clean slate.”

“So, I can leave?”

“Don’t you want to see the place first?”

“No, I just want to get out of here.”

 

********

 

Before she left Bartholomew House, she requested to have his box of belongings, wondering why she hadn’t looked at them before.

There wasn’t much, a pair of black trousers, black boots, an off black round neck jumper and a leather jacket… no, it was too long, it was a long black leather coat. She hesitated before she dug in the pockets, but all she found in their very ordinary depths was a piece of broken wood.


	4. Chapter 4

“Alright?” Rose called through the bathroom door, and he emerged in the clothes she had bought for him, looking a little self-conscious. “You don’t like them?”

“They fit, they seem comfortable…” He was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans, an orange t-shirt and a brown zip up hoodie. Rose had become stuck at footwear and had succumbed to the call of Converse All Stars. In blue.

“But?” she asked.

“I don’t know… they just seem so… so alien to me… I’ll get used to them, been in me jim-jams too long.”

Rose had paled a little at his use of words and could only nod. He didn’t seem to sense anything untoward in her and so she gathered herself together. “Are you ready then? Got everything?”

“I think so... toiletries… pyjamas, don’t tell but I’ve become quite attached to them! Oh hang on, there’s one more thing…” He pulled open the drawer beside the bed and dug right into the back of it, then he pulled out something that was vaguely shiny, and Rose looked at him, puzzled.

“Whatever’s that?”

“Oh, it was in amongst my things. I nearly forgot about it, but I suppose, that’s me all over… it’s a bit battered and broken, I can’t even open it up, seems to have seized. I think it’s an old fashioned pocket watch.” He handed it over to her with a slight shrug.

She studied it, trying to find the answers they had all been searching for regarding this man since he had been there. It certainly looked like an old pocket watch. It was battered and the engraving on it was rubbed away so that the pattern was indecipherable. The metal was a dull silver colour, possibly pewter, but it felt almost warm to the touch.

“It’s nice, what made you keep it with you?” she touched the little knob that should have flicked it open, but nothing happened, so she handed it back.

“Oh… I don’t know… I suppose it seemed like the most intimate link I had to my past… and I’ve tried everything bar smashing it to open it. I sort of see it as a parallel with my memory. You know, like if I could open it, then maybe I could open my memories… time stood still and so did I. Sounds stupid when I say it out loud…”

“No, it sort of makes sense… perhaps you’d let me take into work and get them to look at it?”

“I don’t see what good that would do.”

“Maybe they could get the opening mechanism working, at least then you could use it?”

“Whatever you think, I’m in your hands now…”

Rose’s stomach turned another of those flips that she kept getting when she was with him and so she quickly opened the door before he could notice her blush. “Your chariot awaits!” she said with a flourish of her arm. He grinned happily and followed her out into the long corridor. They moved together comfortably like two people who knew each other well even though it had been only a little over a week. Their arms brushed against each other every now and again but neither one of them seemed to mind.

They left with little fuss; the nurse on duty saw them out of the main entrance and waved the car away.

“Glad to see the back of me…” he muttered as he strapped the seat belt over his lap.

“Ah, well, I think it’s probably very mutual…” Rose smiled and started the engine. “Do you think you drive?” she asked as she pulled her little blue jeep down the long gravel driveway.

“I don’t know… I’ll have to have a go and see if I do at some point. I suppose I’ll need a new driving licence anyway… a whole new identity…”

“That’s all in hand… work is getting some paperwork ready for Monday morning…”

“You're really going to have to go into more detail about “work”, what branch of healthcare is Torchwood anyway? I mean, I know I’m a man without memory, but they do seem to stretch further than one would imagine necessary.”

“We’re not healthcare, Bartholomew.”

“What are you then?”

“We’re an organisation set up to explore anything unusual, we’re also trained to defend this planet against any outside threats…”

“So, why would a company like that need a social… hang on… what do you mean outside threats… that sounds like you mean extra terrestrial threats?” He snorted, but the smile was soon wiped off his face when he saw how serious Rose looked.

“I will explain all, but not here, not yet.”

“But, am I alien?”

“I don’t think so, no more than I am, anyway.”

“You don’t think… are you alien?”

“I’m human, so are you, let’s leave it at that for now, right?” He stared at the side of her face and said nothing more for a long while. 

It was hot in the car and he unzipped his hoodie, and manoeuvred it off around the seatbelt. Rose glanced across at his arms and quickly looked back to the road.

“You keep doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Looking at my arms and not saying anything.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do, you just did it again. They’re just burn scars.”

“I know, I’ve read the reports.”

“But you haven’t said a word about them.”

“Nope, it would be rude of me to point them out. Besides, they hardly show.”

“Must have been a nasty fire and yet no record of anything in the area I was found in, no house fires, no crashed vehicles, nothing.”

“I know; another mystery.”

As they drove out of the countryside, the traffic began to build up and when they hit the outskirts of London they came to a standstill. It was late Friday afternoon and the rush hour was at its peak. 

“Well, isn’t that just wizard, the joys of travelling by road!” he said as he leaned forward and started to fiddle with the radio. 

“It’s still better than zeppelin any day…” muttered Rose.

The flat that she had bagged him was on a corner of the old Victorian house and it had a little courtyard garden attached. He checked every room with a bemused expression on his face. He sat on the sofa, turned the taps, checked the stocked fridge and bounced on the bed. 

“I think it will do, its as good as any place to start, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So… is this where you leave me to fend for myself for the weekend?”

“Well, only if you want me to, I sort of thought you might want to explore a little, get to know your surroundings?”

“Explore? Now that really sounds like a plan!”


	5. Chapter 5

They ate in a little family run Chinese restaurant that Rose knew quite well, although she hadn’t let on yet that she lived fairly nearby. She got the impression he might have guessed considering how familiar the staff were with her.

Talking to him was easy even if everything they said to one another seemed to have hidden meanings. Undoubtedly the chemistry between them was very strong and the proprietors seemed delighted that at last the lonely famous girl had someone to share with.

“I love this song…” said Rose, swaying in her seat and looking more relaxed than she ever had in this dimension.

“Yeah? You want to dance?”

“Here? We can’t!”

“Why ever not? I’m sure they won’t mind… there’s no one else here… go on, let me see if I can.” His request was irresistible, and she let him lead her to the front of the restaurant where there was an open space.

The manager smiled, bent down and upped the volume as they began to dance, and the kitchen door opened slightly so the entire kitchen staff could get a look at the sweetness of it all.

But Rose didn’t notice any of this because quite suddenly she was in the arms of a man. A man she was impossibly attracted to.

“Oh, look, I can dance… I wonder what else I can do…”

“You have a lot to discover, a long journey.”

“I do, and if they’re as fantastic as this, Rose Tyler, then I’m on to a winner.”

“Shut up, you assume I’m gonna be about all the time?”

“It’d be better with two.” Rose didn’t respond to this, she was too conscious of their hips swaying together. He even smelled like him and she didn’t feel that was quite right, but nevertheless she was transfixed by this and couldn’t stop. “I never asked… are you, I mean is there anybody... have you…?”

“I’m single, if that’s what you’re getting at.” His smile said it all.

“Ever been in love?”

“Yeah… it’s a bit one-sided, all these questions being asked and I can’t ask you the same…”

“Alright, I just wanted to know if there was any competition, I mean, that is assuming this is no longer a professional relationship?”

“Bit forward…”

“That wasn’t an answer…”

“No… it’s no longer professional… I just want to help you.”

“Mmm, is that so? Help me what, exactly?”

“You… are a terrible flirt!”

“I thought I was doing quite well actually, I mean, you seem to react well, blushing and that tongue on the teeth… and your pulse quickens… oh, was that too much? Did I step over that line again?”

“Maybe, but, it's okay, its quite refreshing actually. Whatever did you say to that nurse to get that reaction from her?”

“Oh. It was nothing, I suppose I’m only flesh and blood… something to do with the cut of her jib, you know those nurses uniforms can be extremely... flattering, I think she took it the wrong way, thought I was commenting on her décolleté and slapped me one.”

“You mean you were ogling her cleavage and she caught you at it? Still, she shouldn’t have slapped you, you being a patient and all.”

“I think she thought I was going to do more, she was washing me at the time…”

“Ah…” Rose flushed and he grinned, realising the picture he had conjured up. 

The music stopped, and they made their way back to their table. The manager bought the bill over, and it was only then that realised how late it had got.

Outside the restaurant, he took her hand as they began to walk back the way they had come and although there was a bit of a battle within her, she made no attempt to take it away. And so they walked slowly along, as if they had all the time in the world.

“So, Miss Tyler, are you escorting me home?”

“That I am Mr Smith, that I am.”

“But, who then, will be escorting you home?”

“I think I can find my way alright…”

“I don’t like to think of you out late on your own.”

“I can look after myself, no need to worry, besides, I only live about half a mile down the road and I have the car by yours.”

“Right… well, that’s good…” 

She got the impression he was disappointed and smiled at the floor, wondering what he had had in mind. And, at the same time, sort of knowing.

The grab happened all too quickly. One minute they were strolling along, the next minute, Rose was shoved into Bartholomew and the figure in black had a hold of her bag. There was a struggle, and then the thief left them at speed with Rose’s bag gripped tightly in his or her hand.

It was a split second that she took to look at him. He was grappling in his pocket for something that obviously wasn’t there and then he caught her eye.

“Run!” she hissed and took off after the thief at top speed. She didn’t know why she did it, since she knew that she could cancel her cards before the robber would even have time to look at them, but something in her was impelled to do this.

He was after her in a flash, sprinting, catching up and overtaking easily. She watched his retreating back and felt no guilt at the exhilaration that coursed through her. 

Then he disappeared around a corner and her heart skipped a beat, there was the sound of an engine and a car pulling off. She sprinted around the corner slap bang into him. He was panting, watching the car driving away at top speed. He was holding her bag in his hand.

“How did you manage that?” she squeaked, leaning against the wall out of breath, and he joined her, shaking his head.

“I don’t know, grabbed it as he was getting in the car, handle’s snapped, should be all there, though.”

“Thanks… I shouldn’t have got us running like that, it was reckless.”

“A natural reaction… besides, I really enjoyed the thrill of the chase. Where are we now then?”

“About four buildings from mine…”

“Right...” There was a slight moment of hesitation before she answered.

“Oh, come on… a cup of coffee ain’t gonna hurt!”


	6. Chapter 6

Her flat seemed to shrink with him standing about in it and she talked nervously from the kitchen as she brewed some coffee for them both. 

He loitered in the living room inspecting photographs, weird ornaments that looked like pieces of rock and generally getting the feel of Rose Tyler’s place.

Then he wandered into the kitchen only to find her on a chair reaching into a cupboard for some biscuits she was sure she had bought just in case Tony came to visit.

“Careful…” His hands reached up to her hips to steady her and she jumped, lost her footing and slipped right into his arms. Suddenly, she was shy and he, sensing this, towered above her, fascinated by this attraction and unable to move out of her personal space.

“Made me jump… was looking for biscuits...” she mumbled hardly daring to look into his eyes.

“Rose…”

“I know I’ve got chocolate digestives up there somewhere…”

“Rose…”

“And there might even be some Garibaldis if we’re lucky…”

“Rose…”

“I… yeah?” Her eyes finally travelled upwards and met his. She felt as though she were falling into them.

“What’s happening to us?” he asked as his head lowered ever so slightly towards her.

“What?”

“I’m drawn to you, like a moth to the flame… I mean I don’t know if I ever believed in love at first sight and we’re, you and I, perfect strangers when you think of it, but nothing has ever felt as right as this right here, right now. I want to kiss you… I want to kiss you so much... but should I?”

“I…”

“I mean, I may have no memory and even I seem to know it’s too soon… but you’re magnetising and the only way I’m going to stop is if you tell me not to…” 

Rose didn’t say anything, but she slowly and unconsciously nibbled her lower lip, moistening it and making it swell just a little. He was transfixed, unable to tear his eyes away from Rose Tyler’s mouth and slowly, slowly he dipped his head down until they softly joined.

Every nerve in Rose’s body sparked to life as they gently and tentatively kissed one another. She had been dreaming of kissing someone like him for longer than she cared to remember and that in itself was wrong, wrong, wrong. 

And yet, it felt so very, very right as their kiss deepened and her mouth opened into his slightly and allowed their tongues to meet and taste each other. Her arms came up around his neck of their own accord and his automatically pulled her waist into him. Their bodies pressed to each other and their mouths followed suit, lips rolling against lips, tongues gliding around mouths until Rose felt quite giddy with the stirrings within her.

She found herself backed up against the worktop and his hands smoothing up and down her back, hers were in his hair pulling him in as if he could get any closer. 

Their mouths parted for breath and her name came from his lips on a quavering sigh.

“Rose…”

“Too fast…” she said pulling back and looking into the depths of the abyss.

“Can’t help it… all this… chemistry… tell me to stop….” The words were said upon her lips and she couldn’t resist them. Their mouths met again, this time with more intent as her body took over her head and she pulled him tightly into her, feeling every part of him pressing into her.

The phone rang in the distance and her eyes opened fully, but he ignored it.

“I’d better get that, it might be work…” she whispered pulling back from him, half of her grateful for the interruption, the other bitterly disappointed. His face was something she would remember, possibly take out and relive later on that night, but the ringing phone didn’t give her a chance to act upon her wanton impulses.

It was her mother, right on cue, as if her sixth sense had kicked in and she wanted to put a stop to whatever her daughter was up to.

“Been ringin’ all evening, Rose, where’d you get to?”

“Went for a meal at Paradise Gardens, forgot my phone.”

“S’not right, pretty girl like you eatin’ alone on a Friday… and wanderin’ about the streets at night an’ all!”

“Who said I was alone, Mum?”

“Don’t you go teasin' me like that, givin’ me false hopes… I was ringin’ to see if you was comin’ up the weekend?”

“No… not this weekend, Mum, got too much on at work… but I’ll catch up with you in the week.”

“Pete says it’s dead quiet, don’t you go avoidin’ me, my girl. I can always come there and drag you home!”

“Mum, this is my home and I’d bloody well like to see you try…” Rose was laughing at her mother and listening out to the movements in her kitchen.

“Tony misses you…”

“Don’t start with the emotional blackmail, Mum, I am busy this weekend and Pete knows all about it, I’ll try and make it next week, okay?”

“Got your favourite in an’ all!”

“Goodbye, Mum…”

“Ta’ra Rose.” Rose replaced the receiver and took a deep breath. There was a gorgeous man in her flat who wanted her as much as she wanted him, but she knew she had to be strong and not let it happen, not yet, not when there were things he should know.

At this point the object of her dilemma walked into the living room carrying a tray. Upon it were two cups of fresh coffee and a plate of biscuits, half chocolate digestives and half Garibaldis. He set it down on the table and sat on the sofa.

“I think we may have to learn to walk before we run, Rose, I’m sorry.” He patted the seat beside him and she sat, almost shyly.

“S’okay… I wanted to…”

“Oh, I know that… but we still have a lot to learn about each other. I don’t want to blow this.”

“You couldn’t… but you’re right. We have all the time in the world.” She picked up a mug and a biscuit and dunked it into the steaming coffee. He watched as she licked the melted chocolate from the digestive and felt his inside’s curl again.

“Your mother ringing at one o’clock in the morning?” he said to try and change the subject although he was finding it difficult watching her mouth at work on the biscuit.

“Yeah, well, I knew she’d ring, left my phone here on purpose… she’s tried phoning all evening. I suppose she worries about me.”

“Quite right too…” he said and Rose choked on a piece of biscuit.

“Sorry… went down the wrong…” she spluttered while he thumped her back.

“Perhaps I should leave?” he asked once she was settled again.

“You don’t have to… I’m not tired… we could… talk?” 

“I’d like that.” And so they made themselves comfortable, he took off his shoes and she sat cross legged on the sofa facing him.

“So, Rose Tyler… tell me all there is to know about you….”


	7. Chapter 7

“See, the thing is, Bartholomew, it’s somewhat complicated…” By now they were both sitting opposite one another on her squashy sofa, his legs crossed like hers making him look a little like a newborn giraffe. But he was too interested in her words to move.

“Try me, I couldn’t be less complicated, I have nothing to tell… so we have more time for your… complications.” He was humouring her and she felt like screaming, not necessarily at him, just maybe opening the window and screaming into the night, just to let it out of her system.

“You understand I work for an unusual company?” she continued, tying to maintain an outer calm.

“Aliens… of the Extra-Terrestrial kind, I mean what do you do, research, the possibility?” It was almost like he was teasing her, but she forged on with much reluctance.

“Nope… I don’t need to… they exist…” She dropped the remark flippantly to try and shock him out of it.

“Ah… right and you have proof of this I suppose?”

“Yes.” His eyebrows raised themselves upward in shock.

“You’re barmy... I’m imagining all this and you’re really one of the inpatients?”

“Don’t be silly… open your mind… even though you don’t know… you know something’s… off?” She took his hands to try and make a connection with him, try to will him to not let them go in the direction they had to head to.

“I am an alien, aren’t I? That’s what the problem is?”

“No, it isn’t that… do you know anything about parallel dimensions?”

“Do you mean dimensions… or universes?”

“Aren’t they the same?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so… but what do I know?”

“Oh, you obviously do know something… cutting to the chase… I’m from another dimension or universe or whatever you call it.”

“You are?”

“Yup… came here about three years ago… not by choice, got trapped here with my Mum.”

“Seriously?”

“I wouldn’t make it up, I mean, why would I? The thing is… you know space and dimensions… even time itself… it can be journeyed through… it really can and that’s what I do, what I did… Torchwood help people like me, and beings from other planets… and on top of that we protect this world from any threats.”

“Rose… hang on… let me absorb… it sounds ludicrous, but why do I believe you so readily?”

“Cos you’re like me…”

“I’m from your universe?”

“I don’t know what universe you’re from… I just know that you’re not from this one.”

“How… how do you know exactly that?”

“Tests… blood… we come across all sorts of unusual and forbidden equipment in our line of work…”

“You ran tests on me… without my permission?”

“I didn’t even know of your existence at that point… it’s routine for strangers without identity, I’m afraid, at least, it is in this universe… and anyway how could you have possibly given your permission, you said yourself that you were bonkers mad… demented…”

“Like the soul had been sucked out of me… but I came back.”

“You came back…”

“And that’s why you’re interested in me… because we're from different universes?”

“No… well, yes… sort of…yet more complications...”

“More than aliens being real and you and me gallivanting around universe hopping?”

“Bartholomew, I don’t want to ruin this... I really, really don’t and I’m scared that what you want, what you need, to know will change us… that you will think differently of me and that whatever has started between us will end before its properly begun.”

“Like that’s ever going to happen!”

“You might think differently when you hear it.”

“Then don’t tell me… keep it a secret…”

“I couldn’t!”

“Check Mate…”

“Fine, I came to see you because you look like someone I used to… to know.”

“I look like someone?”

“Identical, spitting image…”

“So, I’m an alternative him? You were interested in me because I look like your lost lover?”

“He wasn’t my lover! And you aren’t him, you really can’t be him… it isn’t possible for you to be an alternate him…”

“But Rose, it makes sense… of course I must be… that explains this attraction, this chemistry… he may not have been your lover, but I can tell… you loved him.”

“Bartholomew, whatever’s going on between us is real, truly, it is… but you aren’t him!”

“How do you know that?”

“Cos you only have one heart!”

“What?”

“He… he was… is… an alien… you’re human… he has two hearts!”

“Well how can I compete with that?”

“You don’t need to compete… it was a long time ago… your face may have drawn me to you at first, but its completely different now… what’s the matter, you look awful?” Indeed, he had gone an awful shade of grey.

“My head… is killings me…”

“Is it bad… do you think you need a doctor?” Rose leaned forward, touched his face, but he pulled back, clutching his head.

“I suffer from migraines… I’m probably suffering from overload, done more in the past twenty four hours than I have in the past twenty four months… usually a couple of paracetamol and a lie down in the dark does the trick… sorry…”

“No, I am... listen, go and lie down on my bed... I’ll bring you some paracetamol…”

“No! It' s your room, I can’t take your bed from you!”

“Half an hour ago you would have been racing me there…” 

“Don’t joke… it's like someone drumming inside my head!”

“I’ll be fine here; me and this sofa have spent more nights than I can remember together… anyway, I don’t think we’d make it back to yours, not with you in this state…”

He didn’t put up much of a fight and by the time Rose brought him a glass of water and two white tablets he was out for the count on her bed. She placed them gently on the bedside and then moved over to the blackout blind and rolled it down, shutting out the harsh orange light from the street lamps.

She pulled her favourite and familiar throw over herself, but it was a long time before she drifted off to sleep. She was worried that she had said too much, worried that she had blown her chances with this man, this stranger who she knew nothing of but at the same time felt like she had known forever.


	8. Chapter 8

Rose woke with a start, wondering how she could have fallen asleep on the sofa again and then she remembered. She listened out for signs of movement about the flat, but there was silence. She sat up and tried to focus on the clock on the mantel, then she heaved herself up and stretched before heading towards the bathroom.

She daren’t look in her bedroom for fear that he had vamoosed before she had a chance to explain… to tell him how she felt. No, if she didn’t go in, then she could imagine he was still there… still fast asleep as she had left him.

The truth had damaged this fragile thing that had begun between them and yet she could not regret her words. To fall in… fall in love with someone. Oh my God… one kiss and she loved him? In truth, she loved him before the kiss. How could that be? She had loved the Doctor for so long and now to just change her feelings so easily, especially as his face was the spitting image?

There was only one answer to this… that somehow, some way… he was…

“Rose, I… Oh, God!” He had walked in on her… sat upon the loo pondering the world and peeing! Her face flushed crimson as he stuttered apologies from the living room where he had darted back to. 

She took a deep breath, rolled off some loo paper and sorted herself out. She paused briefly at the door before she entered the living room, putting on a face, trying to look nonchalant and all the while inside being partly deeply embarrassed and partly exultant at the fact that he was still there.

“My fault… shoulda locked the door… always doin’ that… forgot you was in the flat!” She reverted to her South London roots to cover her embarrassment and was pleased to see the remains of his own blush still very evident upon his lightly freckled cheeks.

“Forgot?” he repeated a little dumbly.

“Not actually forgot… just thought you had legged it after last night…”

“You think I’d give up just like that? Oh, Rose, have you been let down so very badly that you have to protect yourself this ferociously? I don’t know how I know this, my memory won’t let me know how I know this, but I can tell you… people fall in love… more than once in a lifetime if they’re lucky. You were in love, with a… a man who happened to look exactly like me… if you were drawn to me because of my face then I can only get down on my knees and thank the powers that be for giving me this face!”

Rose didn’t know why she did, but she really did, (just like Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility) she began to let out great hulking squeaks and sobs as he watched in fascinated horror.

It was just a moment of that, though, before he was across the room and taking her into his arms and offering her comfort while she let it out. He had broken through her resistances just by staying. He was hooked; there was no turning back from this, nor probably ever had been from the moment he first set eyes upon her in the rose garden back at the hospital.

“I’m sorry…” she gulped, trying to get a grip of herself and desperately conscious of her morning breath; but he just held her tightly and made soft crooning noises of comfort that did exactly that to her, together with an innate urge to laugh out loud.

Eventually, she did stop and he pulled back, the love in his eyes very evident. This was uncompromising, this comfort, there was no ulterior motive in the cuddle, which, she was shocked to find, disappointed her somewhat.

“You’re even beautiful when you cry…” he said softly with a smile and she sniffed and shook her head.

“Last night’s make up… red nose… I don’t think so… No; don’t kiss me… morning breath!”

He had moved his head forward in an involuntary movement, but he pulled back at her words. “Doubt it… more likely me than you.” They didn’t speak for a moment, their eyes saying more than the words they could possibly find.

“I’ll just go… and … yeah?” She crooked her head towards the bathroom door as she spoke and he nodded, remaining still as she backed into the bathroom and staring at the door well after she had shut and locked it.

Rose emerged washed and brushed and tidied with minty fresh breath and found him in the kitchen making breakfast.

“Hope you don’t mind… my stomach started growling at me?”

“No, it’s fine, make yourself at home…” 

He turned and looked at her then, giving her a smouldering look that shot electricity through her from her head to her toes. “I could get used to that…” he answered after a beat and turned back to the eggs he was scrambling.

“Smells good… you found everything all right?”

“Yeah… it seems I know my way around a kitchen, even if the fayre is pretty basic, sit down.” Rose did as he told her without a word and he turned and placed a plate of wholemeal toast, scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes in front of her. He sat down in front of his own identical plateful and poured two glasses of orange juice.

“Blimey… I don’t … “

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Rose Tyler… and besides, you look awfully thin…”

“I usually just grab a banana in passing was what I meant.”

“Well… that’s good… bananas are good… can’t knock that… but so are eggs… Rose, are you alright?” Rose was choking on a piece of wholemeal toast.

Once she was back in her seat swallowing a huge mouthful of orange juice, the conversation continued, omitting the banana episode.

“Did you freshly squeeze this, or have you been out for it, cos I know I never had any in?”

“I squeezed it… I’ve been up and about a while… I didn’t disturb you, did I? Well… no obviously I didn’t…”

“No… I must have slept heavily… but you’ve cleared up and everything… it’s only half nine now!”

“I never seem to need much sleep, couple of hours a night… pottered about in your room for a while, but there are only so many drawers you can prod about in… I’m joking! Although… that telescope is some pretty powerful piece of equipment!”

“Oh, yeah… keep meaning to take that back into work… its not really mine and I can’t get it to work properly anyway…”

“Really?”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Get it working?”

“Well, yes… the intra-lense was out… I just opened up the main case, repositioned it and, voila, there were the stars… bit weird, that, though…”

“Weird?”

“Well… maybe I’m used to the solar system from another universe, but it looked like some of them were missing…”


	9. Chapter 9

“The stars are going out… how do you know… I mean, how familiar are you with the solar system?”

“I don’t know… thought I knew it like the back of my hand… it was compulsory to study astronomy and, indeed, astrology after the third year at… at…” he stopped, looked puzzled and shook his head.

“Can you show me?”

“Not till tonight… it could just be the difference between this universe and wherever my last one was… I’m not exactly accurate…”

“Yeah… but, in my experience, the geography of this universe doesn’t seem to have any difference… in fact, if anything, I thought I may have spotted a couple of extra ones... you know, on a clear night?”

“You study the stars?”

“Well… after you’ve travelled amongst them, you tend to keep tabs…” Rose smiled a little wistfully and he nodded and took her hand across the table, squeezed it with a shy smile.

“So, we have a whole day before I can show you… what shall we do with it?” Rose giggled at the waggling eyebrows and shook her head.

“I think we should go and get you sorted in your place… you know, make it more… homely?” He nodded slowly, thoughtfully; but the look upon his face told her that was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Couldn’t we just go out for the day? I mean, I’m in a city that I don’t remember being in… not with these eyes, with a beautiful, sexy woman. I’m free and it’s Saturday!”

“Saturday?”

“”Yup… I like Saturday’s… let’s go out?”

“Out?”

“Are you just going to answer me in one worded questions because that could get rather dull?”

“Like on a date, out?”

“Well… no…”

“Oh… “

“Rose, I haven’t got any money… how could I ask you on a… a date without a bean in my pocket?”

Rose’s face broke into her naughtiest grin, the tongue protruding onto her teeth. “Date’s on me, tightwad!”

And that should have been that. They were getting ready as the doorbell went making Rose jump three feet in the air.

“Who is it?” she squeaked through the door, praying to everything she believed in that it wasn’t her mother come to drag her to the mansion for the weekend as she had threatened.

“Rose… it’s me… let me in?” It was Mickey and Bartholomew looked at her curiously as she replied through the door.

“It’s not a very good time right now, Mickey…. I’m busy… er… waxing…”

“Well, I came to warn you about a couple of things… I think I could cope with seeing a bit of wax on your legs…”

“Ain’t on me legs… warn me… ‘bout what?” Bartholomew looked at her with an open mouth, clearly shocked, but she just winked at him and gently shook her head.

“There’s something big going on… something alien… data last night was off the scale…”

“Something to do with the stars?”

“Yeah how did you… anyway, Pete’s on his way to town right now…”

“That it?”

“Christ, Rose, biggest thing since we got stuck here and you ain’t interested? No, there’s something else… you know that mad bloke?”

“Mad bloke?”

“Oh come on… that mad bloke that looks exactly like the Doctor… the one you decided to rescue, installed him up the road?”

“For Christ sake, Mickey!”

“He’s done a bunk… didn’t go back there after you dropped him… thought you should know… he could be dangerous… you coming to the Wharf?”

“Yeah... later…”

“See you then…”

Rose turned to Bartholomew wondering where he was going to start with the questions, but he had gone back into the living room.

“Mickey… old friend of mine… forgot to tell you he moved over here too, of his own accord, not stuck like me and Mum, not that Mum minded … no she’s made a good life for herself here… don’t want you to get the wrong end of the…”

“Doctor?”

“Yeah… you do seem to pick up on…”

“Doctor who?”

“What do you mean?”

“The doctor your old friend said… a doctor? Doctor of what… what was his name?”

“We just called him The Doctor… that’s who he was… is… does it ring bells?”

“I don’t know… maybe it’s just alarm bells… but why would you think it might? You already said I’m definitely not him.”

“No… you can’t be, but something isn’t ringing quite true… come on… we’re going to have to do our date another time…”

“Where are we going?”

“First we’re going to your new place to pick up that watch and then we’re going to Torchwood… I smell trouble and trouble is what I do… do you trust me?”

“I do, I really do...”

“Good… there’s something going on and you… you’re a missing piece… I don’t know how… but I’m going to bloody well do my best to work it out. You can already identify what stars are missing… in fact maybe we should take the telescope too…”

“You want me to help?”

“Yeah… course… you want to?”

“If only to be with you… yeah, I do.” Rose stepped forward and kissed him full on the mouth, the first time she had initiated contact like this between them and he was so shocked he didn’t have time to react. She pulled back after a beat and smiled up at him.

“Come on… before I change my mind…” she put a hand out to him, grabbed her still broken bag and pulled him out of her flat.

“Oh that’s just not fair… you dragging me out when you’ve delivered such a loaded line…” he complained as she giggled.

Out on the street, she linked her arm into his and they began to walk happily, comfortably down the street towards his flat together. To passers by they would have looked very much like two people in love.

The figure sitting on the wall opposite knew better. He jumped down and crossed the road stepping in behind them, following them at a distance.

“Well… when this is sorted, then we can really get our teeth into your place, we can make it a really nice place to be… cosy...”

“And you’ll be visiting me in my cosy little flat?”

“Might even stop over now and again... if you’re lucky…” she teased, tongue on lip again, but he didn’t seem to take it in.

“Rose… you know the mugger from last night?”

“Yeah… don’t remind me… look at my bag…”

“I think he’s back for a second chance… someone is following us… don’t look back!”

Rose didn’t, but her step slowed somewhat and she fumbled about in her bag, pulled out a little make-up mirror and held it up. Then she swung round before Bartholomew could react and stormed up to their tracker, hands on hips.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Me… what do you think you’re playing at, Rose?” Bartholomew watched on as the two faced up to each other, anger very evident on both their faces.

“It’s none of your business, Mickey Smith… sticking your nose in!”

“You see his face and you don’t even know him… Rose, you’re risking your life makes it my business… I’m your second…”

“Only at work!”

“Bartholomew Smith pleased to meet you,” interrupted Bartholomew, walking between them and offering a hand towards Mickey, who stared at it for a beat and then brushed it away with a scoff.

“Smith? I am not hearing this right… for God’s sake, Rose, open your eyes!”

“I am… for the first time since I came here, I really am, Mickey!”

“Remember how some can get into your heads, Rose… it’s just another trap and you’re falling for a face…”

“A friend, you said, Rose, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that sounds like jealousy?” Bartholomew interjected again.

“Friend? Oh, before the Doctor, I was more than that… and you, if you’re for real, you have so much to live up to… I’m the Smith pre-Doctor… and you… the Smith post…” spat Mickey.

“Mickey Smith, you get off your high horse, I can look after myself… it isn’t Bartholomew that you have grief with, it’s the Doctor and he isn’t him, nor even a substitute for him… Bartholomew is more than that and as soon as you get over it and let me get on with it, the better! I don’t need you to look out for me, and haven’t for a very long time if I ever actually did!”

“And that’s that, is it?”

“Yeah, pretty much… I love you, Mick, as a brother, but I can live me own life.”

“Fine… ain’t nuffin left to say then.” And with that, Mickey turned tail and left them standing.

“Oh bollocks!” said Rose watching him go.

“That is not at all the reaction of a friend, Rose…”

“No… be warned, there’s gonna be so much more than that if this is actually the way we’re headed…”

“Headed, I think we got there last night?”

“Come on, let’s go and get that watch…” Rose held her hand out to him and they walked the short distance to his flat in reflective silence.

When they got through his door, she turned to him only to find him right there beside her in that space beyond personal again. He was looking down at her with such intensity that it quite took her breath away.

“Bartholomew?”

“Rose… I… think… no, I know... I know… Rose Tyler…”

“Yeah?”

“I... love you…”


	10. Chapter 10

“Love me? But you hardly know me…” stammered Rose, mesmerised by the dark look on his face. She felt like a rabbit caught in head lamps.

“I think I was made for you… I feel like I’ve known you forever… Rose, I have nothing to offer you, not yet, but I will, you’ll see… but I am sure of my feelings… I just had to tell you…”

Rose could feel the sting of tears building in the ducts of her eyes and blinking them back, she reflected on the man who shared his face.

This man could say it, stripped back to absolutely no memory, but he was completely sure of how he felt about her. It was a beautiful thing, and she was just so frightened of what might happen if she let herself fall. On the other hand, she was already well on the way down. 

“That Mickey Smith… I mean, you told him, you told him exactly where he stood. So bold, so… fantastic. You’ve known him far longer than me and yet it was me you stood for… that means so much, you know that?”

And that was a first too. Mickey had been around playing the waiting game for, well, forever and this was the first time that she had actually put him straight. It didn’t make her feel all that fantastic.

“I think I might explode if you don’t say something, Rose… I know it’s too soon, but I feel like I’ve wasted so much time and I don’t know why… I mean I have nothing to gauge it on… not having any memories, it’s not a good place to be and I accept that, I really do… except now, now I want to start making some and I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather make them with than…”

“Bartholomew, shut up…” Rose interrupted him and reached up and kissed him gently on the lips taking him by surprise. He responded pretty quickly, his arms pulling her to him and wrapping himself around her.

Rose felt her body reacting to him. It had been so long and it was exciting and frightening at the same time. This could go anywhere right now, she could control it. Her heart wanted this, her body had wanted it since she had clapped eyes on him in the rose garden… but her head was telling her it was too soon.

It was Bartholomew who pulled back from her, desperately trying to control the passion that was building inside him.

“Rose… I’m sorry… using the chemistry between us… I don’t want to rush you…”

“You just said you did…” Rose found her voice and her sense of humour at the same time. She grinned wickedly up at him.

“I’m trying to get a grip here, you with that mouth and those eyes… cosy be damned… that bed will be worn out before it's even been slept in at this rate!”

“You’re right… we should slow down… plenty of time for that when this problem has been dealt with…” She pulled back from him and turned to look for the box they had put down the previous evening. 

His face was a complete picture as he digested her promise of things to come, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish as she picked up the box, rifled through it and then turned back to him.

“Might as well get the lot tested, I mean there’s more alien tech there than anywhere on Earth… you still don’t know what this is?” She held up the pieces of carved broken wood and tried to join them together. 

“Don’t…” he said softly, and she looked up at him, a little surprised.

“You do remember?”

“No… I have no idea what it is… looks like part of a candlestick or a very ornate banister… I meant, don’t get embarrassed by us and try to breeze over it… I don’t want to pretend… and I don’t think I could take it if you did.”

“Okay...” The word came out after a slight hesitation, and she felt empowered after she said it. He smiled at her in delight. An agreement had been exchanged between them. 

She dropped the pieces of carved wood back into the box with the clothes and the watch and handed it to him. He took it, eyebrow raised and followed her out of his flat, letting the door slam and lock behind them.

She drove and clued him up on Torchwood along the way.

“It’s only Jake and Pete… oh, and Mickey of course, though, I expect he’ll be sulking anyway…”

“They met this Doctor of yours and no one else did?”

“Yeah… there were a few casualties, but yeah… they are the only remaining ones… oh, and Mum of course, though she won’t be there…”

“I don’t think I’m ready to meet the prospective in-laws just yet anyway…” 

“Well… Pete’s… oh, dear… this is all a little complicated… Pete Tyler is this universe’s version of my dad….” said Rose, flushing slightly at his flippant use of the word in-laws.

“Riiight… and how exactly does that work?”

“My dad died when I was a baby… it was just me and Mum most of my life…”

“Don’t tell me, this universe’s Mrs Tyler died too?”

“Yes… again, a tad complicated, but it wasn't so long before we came here permanently and no, there was no Rose in this universe…”

“Until you…”

“Yeah…”

“Right, so when you happened to get trapped here you sought him out, you and your mother?”

“No… it wasn’t quite like that… he brought us here…”

“Against your will?”

“No… he had no choice… he saved us… we would have been dragged into the Void if he hadn’t brought us here.”

“Void?”

“A kind of space between dimensions… ‘Hell’ he described it as…” Bartholomew nodded wisely as if he knew what she meant. “We were at Torchwood there and he was at Torchwood here, soon as Mum and Pete saw each other it was… inevitable.”

“Now that I can relate to.”

“Yeah… me too…” It was a shy admission, but it delighted Bartholomew immensely.

“We’re there.” Rose had parked, and he hadn’t even noticed.

“So, that’s all I need know?”

“For now… Pete knows about you, and Mickey, it’s only Jake who might have a surprise, but he’s seen identical faces before… he should deal with it easily enough.”

They got out of the car and headed for the lifts to take them up to Pete’s office.

“Why do we need to see him?”

“Need to get you clearance; we’ll be able to go anywhere if he gives us the nod. Doesn’t do to be restricted when there are problems to solve.”

 

********

“Rose, do you know what you’re doing?” Pete sort of hissed across the table, his eyes shifting to Bartholomew every now and again.

“Pete, I’m not deluded, I know as much as I can about this man, and I know he isn’t the Doctor, but something is telling me that he is part of this… and I mean to find out exactly what.”

“But look at you… holding hands… I mean, the man’s a stranger… recently discharged from a mental hospital… what was I thinking?”

“I’m not mad… no madder than anyone else anyway, I just don’t know who I am exactly. I do know the sort of man I am though. I’m the sort of man who falls in love at first sight,” said Bartholomew defiantly. Rose blushed a little but maintained her gaze at Pete, her chin held high.

“You’re in love?”

“We are.” It was Rose that answered this, and Bartholomew looked at her in amazed pride as Pete stood and began to pace.

“But Rose, I mean think… are you sure he hasn’t brainwashed you or something? What the hell is your mother going to say about this?”

“I’ve not been brainwashed… and she’ll just have to deal with it… I agree, I don’t know him… but I believe he is here for a reason and I know what my feelings are only too well… I want him to look around, get the feel of this place, study the skies… I want every possession he was found with thoroughly checked… I want solid facts… then, when we have them maybe there can be some sense in it… until then; we just have to keep Mum in the dark.”

“And if I say no?”

“We’ll do it without your blessing!” Pete and Rose stared at each other for a long beat and then finally, he sat down, opened the screen on his computer and began to type.

“I want to know what you find out, you have the run of Torchwood facilities, but no more secrets, right?”

“Course, goes without saying…” Rose sat back in her chair, blew out her fringe and smiled wickedly at Bartholomew.


	11. Chapter 11

Rose observed as Bartholomew stood, fingers twitching, looking over the shoulder of one of the lab technicians who they had recruited to study all artefacts that came in that looked like they might be of some salvageable use.

Caroline was studying the watch under a microscope and recording all information that she could find into a very complicated software programme that was analysing the intricacies of the much rubbed engraving on the pewter coloured outer shell of it.

Every now and the she would type something in incorrectly and he was so quick to point it out that in the end she turned round and sarcastically offered her work station over to him. He grinned politely and accepted with aplomb, much to her surprise.

His fingers whipped across the keyboard as he continued with interested gusto and it wasn’t long before he had a group of techies surrounding him watching the data being pulled from his efforts.

Rose didn’t intervene, merely felt as if at least one piece of the jig-saw was slotting into its rightful place and moved to the leather coat that was under an infra red shower and picking up very little. 

There was another technician diligently taking fine samples of differing mud that was caked on the black boots he had turned up at the hospital in.

The piece of wood was a huge problem as the equipment they had would not and could not register or understand it.

Rose looked at a magnified sample scraped from it and was fascinated to find that there was actual movement underneath the lenses. It looked more like a completely different life matter than a piece of old tree.

What had looked like intricate carving was more like a skin or shell and although the two pieces seemed like they had once fitted together, it was almost as if they had grown apart from one another. Not only that, within the wound from what must have been their original snapping apart it was clearly plain to see some kind of artery within the core of it.

Bartholomew had finished what he was doing and left the software to translate as best it could to join Rose. A group followed; fascinated by this strange man that Rose Tyler had bought in.

Rose was holding the two pieces in either hand and trying to figure the exact point of break between them, gradually bringing them together.

Bartholomew’s head was throbbing, the watch seemed to draw him, strange whisperings that had no real voice telling him things that he felt he should understand, but didn’t. And Rose fiddling around with those… whatever they were, wasn’t helping. He could see the two pieces trying to join, an invisible membrane running between them that apparently no one else could see.

The drumming in his head, like a pulsating heartbeat, grew stronger and he sat down heavily in a chair. Rose was beside him in an instant, the worry written across her face.

“It's too much… you’ve done so well, I should have thought it might be a terrible strain on you…. Come on, let’s get out of here and get a cuppa… don’t want you relapsing, do we?”

“I’m fine… really… this is just so… intense…”

“Sure you don’t need something a little more sonic?” asked a voice from above their heads. Rose swung around to see Mickey standing there with a rather nasty look upon his face.

“Mickey!” Rose hissed.

“Been watching his progress…” Mickey looked up at the cameras. “Are you so sure he ain’t your Doctor now?”

“This is pointless… we’re trying to solve a problem here… you stand down or I’ll have to take action as your superior officer…” Mickey baulked at this, but the anger didn’t disappear completely.

“Been sent to fetch yous two… Pete wants to show you the recordings from last night’s sky… I’ll keep it professional… but your boyfriend don’t look too well…”

Indeed, Bartholomew was pale and Rose was completely torn between the job in hand and his welfare.

“Look, I can go along with Mickey… why don’t you go to the med bay… have a lie down, yeah?” she tried to coax him, but he was having none of it... he was as fascinated by the puzzle that was unfolding as she was and he knew that he was probably the only one who was going to be able to solve it.

As soon as they were all three in the lift and on the way to the upper floors it was very obvious that whatever was affecting him was lifting fast.

“A little more sonic you say, Mickey? You know I think you may have something there… if I could boost the signals and…”

Mickey looked from Bartholomew to Rose with an open-mouth and shook his head. Bartholomew carried on spewing techno babble and Rose let the glimmer of a smile touch her lips as she nodded at Mickey.

It was a different story when they got into the observation room. Pete had had this place built after the last time the universes were at stake and the glass domed roof housed a telescope of spectacular proportion and capabilities. 

Strangely, this place always reminded Rose of another room housing a telescope on another universe in a different century.

Both Rose and Bartholomew took time to study the charts and satellite footage from the past few days and it was blatantly obvious that all over the stars were blinking out.

Bartholomew was back in front of a computer screen working out the statistics and Mickey took Rose aside and spoke quietly to her.

“You still saying he’s not him?”

“How can he be, Mickey?”

“He looks like him, he acts like him… he’s as flipping clever as him…”

“I know… but you’ve seen the medical reports… he’s human, Mickey and the Doctor isn’t.”

“And you love him… just like that? After all this time, all the heartache, you can just fall for him, a stranger?”

“I don’t understand it any more than you, but I can’t govern the way I feel just because it’s not the way people are supposed to… I’m not like that…”

“Yeah… I think I may have learnt that along the way…”

Bartholomew turned to Pete shaking his head.

“By my calculations, at the rate they’re going, we’ll be in darkness in about a month. It’s moving this way and its moving fast.”

“But what is it?”

“I have no idea… it looks from these like a great wave of blackness. To the naked eye, it’ll be just a glimmer here and there going out in the sky. But it’s more like a darkness engulfing everything in its path.” 

“But we can’t just sit here and watch it coming, we have to try and stop it,” said Rose moving beside him.

“I can decipher statistics it seems, but to solve something like that? No… all I see when I see that coming is the end.” He shook his head and took her hand.

“No…” she whispered.

“No?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you don’t give up, not ever. That there is always hope.”

Pete pulled out another set of statistics and Bartholomew glanced at them and shook his head.

“They make no sense at all… it’s like you’re showing me these reflected… a mirror image…”

“They’re from a parallel dimension?” hazarded Rose in a whisper.

“We think they might be… it seems that the walls of reality are again at risk. And you know exactly what we had to do last time?”

“What?” Bartholomew asked into the following silence.

“We had to go and get the Doctor to help us...” said Mickey softly.


	12. Chapter 12

“You’re not seriously suggesting..?”

“There’s nothing we can do, Rose, he’s just confirmed it… the end is nigh… if he can’t help us, then we have to find the man who can.” 

“But, you remember what he said, Pete… that travelling between the dimensions is damaging and impossible… you could make matters worse!”

“What’s worse than the universes ending, Rose?” asked Mickey.

“And it’s only impossible when the walls of reality are sealed… they aren’t any more…”

“They’re right, Rose, if this Doctor of yours is the key then we have to work at finding him,” Bartholomew added.

“I’ll have the Dimension Hoppers bought to the lab… we can start work on them… Bartholomew, perhaps you could take a look, I’m told you seem to know your way around a laboratory?”

“If I can help, then I surely will, Sir!” Bartholomew looked delighted to be asked and the three men made to leave. Rose hung back and it was a brief moment before Mickey came back.

“Oh dear, Rose, never would have believed it, but what have you done? Turned your back on him after all this time… a month ago you’d have been jumping at the chance to go back… dear, dear… think this might all end in tears?”

“Don’t, Mickey, please…” Rose begged quietly with teary eyes and his face softened.

“I’m sorry… it’s just… well, you know. Anyway, nuffin we can do about it now, we do need the Doctor and you’re the best person to help us find him… part of you must want to?”

“Yeah… yes… no, you’re right. I have to be professional about this. Everything is at stake.”

“That’s my girl!”

*******

And so it was, the Dimension Hoppers were pulled out of storage and another new project was launched in the laboratories.

Bartholomew listened and read and examined the Hopper’s until he was completely comfortable in handling them. Pretty soon it was clear he was going to contribute to the operation and was going to be a vital member of the team.

He suffered bouts of extreme headaches and Rose was careful to watch out for them and act upon them before he passed out which actually had happened on a few occasions at first.

Every night as the skies grew dark they would spend hours in the observatory studying the skies and time began to run away with them. Before long a week had passed and although the Hoppers were coming along, there were still issues with them.

Late one night Bartholomew and Rose were alone in the observation tower and she caught him staring at her.

“What?” she asked with a shy smile. He moved over to her and pulled her in for a hug.

“Oh, I don’t know… just needed a cuddle…”

“It’s gonna be alright, you know?”

“Is it? The world is coming to an end, Rose and I feel like I’m going to lose you…. I’ve only just found you…”

“We have to try… and it’s fine to be scared, we’re all scared... I’m scared…”

“I’m not just scared because of the world coming to an end… I’m scared that your Doctor is going to whisk you away from me… you loved him... it only ended because you're here… when you see him again…”

“Stop it… listen, everyone keeps on referring to him as my Doctor and he isn’t… he never was. He is a completely free spirit and that’s what he chooses to be. I can’t pretend that I didn’t love him and on some levels I know it was reciprocated and although we were never a couple, I will always have strong feelings for him. But we couldn’t offer each other a future… bit ironic considering… I can’t lie, I want to see him again… but I love you, Bartholomew… really… it’s you I want to spend the rest of my life with, want to marry, have children and grow old with and I know that he would be happy for me, ‘the one adventure he could never have’ he used to say…”

“It all works very logically here, but what about when you come face to face with him, Rose?”

“I want you… and however I felt about him once, the truth came to me a long time ago… if he had really wanted me with him, he would have found a way to get me back…” 

“That doesn’t make me feel confident you know... that trace of bitterness I can hear in your voice?”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that, what I’m trying to say is it wasn’t you who made me realise that me and the Doctor didn’t belong together, it was him…”

“Rose, we’ve shared a couple of moments… kisses… what does that actually mean? We have no history… I’m an enigma that doesn’t fit and that’s what fascinates you…”

“Stop it!”

“The world could end… and what have we done since we discovered it? Instead of spending our last moments with each other, we’ve been here trying to get you back to your ex!”

“Bartholomew…”

“We haven’t crossed any lines yet, Rose, and I don’t want to hold you back… if the feelings are the same when you do come face to face with him, well, then I want you to be free to choose, you have to understand that?”

“No, actually, I don’t… because if you loved me like I love you, then you would do everything in your path to keep me, not just hand me over because we have no… no history!”

“I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Yes, you did… you may not mean it completely, but part of you wants to be at home shagging till we die!”

There was a long pause as they glared at each other. Finally he spoke up.

“Alright… I admit it… I’m just a man and I want you, is that a crime? We’ve been stuck here for a week working side by side and it drives me to distraction… the watch… everything... and those Hoppers… so flaky… unsafe…”

“Wh… what?”

“They are… whoever uses them could end up anywhere… until there’s a definite fix on that dimension they aren’t safe to use!”

“But how do you know this, I mean less than two weeks ago you laughed at me for even suggesting there were parallel universes?”

“The numbers, the statistics, they just seem to work for me… I don’t remember anything and I know… everything… it’s like my head is going to burst… “

“But… if the Hoppers are too dangerous… what are we going to do?”

“Well… I may not have it right… I mean, I say they’re flaky and look at me, what do I know?”

“Obviously, a lot… what are we going to do?”

“Do?”

“About the Hoppers?”

“Ah… I thought you meant about… never mind… There’s something I’ve been playing around with… only in my head, you understand? The organic matter we thought was a piece of wood sort of seems to speak to me…”

“Speaks to you? I thought it was the Fob Watch that spoke to you?”

“Neither really actually speak… the watch gibbers a load of gobbledygook… and the other is more a communication, not words, more… feelings…” 

“Feelings?”

“Words are hard to find to describe it… anyway, remember what I said about the charts that Pete showed me last week... the readings from other dimensions?”

“Yeah like you were seeing a mirror image?”

“Yes… I mean if we used some of the raw energy from the Hoppers and built a device that could reflect… well, reflect something from the other universe, there might be a chance… it’s all relative… theory, but the equations seem to point in that way.”

“Something from the other universe? What like… me?”

“Oh, I think that would be too dangerous, no, it’s really hard to distinguish, normally I suppose one would work around the object… that watch, if it wasn’t so… volatile… and if we could guarantee that it was from that universe… but something that has a definite connection…”

“Shut up…”

“What?”

“I think I have something…”

“You do?”

“Not here… in my office... come on…”

 

*********

He hovered in the doorway as she searched the desk drawers and the filing cabinet.

“Rose?”

“Mmmm?”

“What we said before?” She looked up at his words a small smile turning the corners of her mouth.

“Yeah?”

“I was just feeling a little… insecure… you know? I mean, I’d tear anyone apart that tried to take you away and the whole shagging debacle? I mean, it was inappropriate… I can wait… I am… waiting…”

“Me too… come here…” She walked around her desk and he was in her arms in an instant, their mouths locking; the kiss untempered and suddenly passionate with no build to it.

Her hands were pulling at his shirt, fingers walking across his bare skin. He pulled her into him, his hands smoothing over the rounded cheeks he had so been longing to touch. Their tongues were fighting against one another’s and she could feel him pressing into her, her body was pulsing with desire and she didn’t care if he knew it. She wanted him. One hand lingered on the button of his jeans while the other found itself knitting into the hair on the nape of his neck. His right hand moved from her bum to her breast as he traced the outline of her hardened nipple. She groaned in need and her hands swept behind him, pulling him as close as she could.

Their bodies locked into one another and for the briefest of moments a definite image filled his head. The consummation of their love right here, right now upon her desk. He pulled back suddenly, quashing the picture and shaking his head, gasping for air.

“Not here… not like this… not after what I said!” Rose stared at him open-mouthed not quite believing that he had pulled back. He was tempted to dive right back in as he saw the blatant desire on her face, but he didn’t. 

“Okaaaay…” Rose whispered her breaths still heavy.

“I want you… so much… too much. I want... need to wait.”

“You still think I’m gonna run off with him?”

“I want there to be no hurdles… no desperation because we might die… you were right. I love you and I was selfish to make those demands on you…”

“I don’t mind… I’m more than willing…”

“Sshh... there’s something in here…”

“What?”

“Sshh.... let me listen…” Rose watched Bartholomew in alarm as he followed an invisible signal that led him to the wooden sculpture that Tony had given her for her birthday. He stopped and as he did, she remembered.

She walked over to the shelf that he had come to a halt at and stood by him. Then she reached up, slid the object from under the sculpture and handed it over to Bartholomew.

In the palm of his hand there was an innocent looking Yale key.


	13. Chapter 13

“Ow!” The key glowed gold and Bartholomew dropped it.

“You alright?” Rose bent down and picked it up, looking puzzled.

“Burnt me…” he muttered, sucking his hand. Rose pocketed the key and took his wrist, examining the burn. There was a key-shaped mark singed across his palm.

“I don’t understand…” Rose said as she looked from his hand to his face and he shook his head, confirming that he didn’t either.

An impulse surged through her, and she reflected an action she had seen the sharer of this face do many times. She leant down and licked the scald on his hand, flattening her tongue and cooling it for him. He watched her, mesmerised by the simple yet most erotic act he had witnessed her do yet.

“Oh, Rose…” he groaned, his voice breaking, and she smiled up at him wickedly, knowing how close he was to actually breaking.

“Why would it burn you like that? I don’t get it… the key only gets hot if the TARDIS is near and it’s never burnt me… Oh, my God... is the TARDIS near?”

“I have no idea… but it bloody hurt… it was like it was warning me… so you still have the key to his ship then?”

“Yeah… but it isn’t like that… she was… she could get in your head… like she knew your feelings, your moods… how you worked mentally… and physically… she was a friend.”

“Ah… a sentient ship… and we have the key to her… well that’s the theoretical problem of travelling between dimensions solved then…”

“What?”

“That key is… well, it’s the key… you have the strongest link if his ship is all you say it is.”

“Theoretical?”

“Yeah… well… we can only make assumptions… I mean nothing is truth until it is physically proven…”

“So we can do it… make this reflecting thing you were on about?”

“We can build it… not sure if it will actually work though… proof would be in the pudding…”

“You know it’ll work… you just don’t want to believe it will…” Bartholomew shrugged to this and Rose pulled out the key again studying it with a frown. “Still don’t get it…”

“It was hostile… angry… like I was… wrong somehow…” Rose looked up at him with wide eyes.

“Wrong?”

“I didn’t make sense to it…”

“How do you know that?”

“Mmmm? It’s just what I felt… everything is relative when you think about it…”

“Even me?”

“Never you…”

 

***********

 

“So, you’re proposing that we ditch the Hoppers knowing full well that they have served the purpose in the past and start work on yet another project that you can’t even guarantee will work?”

“I didn’t say ditch them… just that I came up with what should be a much safer option…”

“Should be?” scoffed Mickey, shaking his head.

“And what makes you think that I’d consider this?” asked Pete.

“I did… he makes sense, I trust his instincts,” said Rose defiantly, glaring at Mickey.

“We don’t have time to waste… you can see how fast the Darkness is swallowing up the stars!” hissed Mickey.

“Explain your theory,” said Pete holding up a hand to shut Mickey up. Mickey didn’t look at all pleased but he held his tongue and looked at Bartholomew expectantly.

“Well… the Hoppers aren’t exactly spot on… they’re risky… there’s always a danger of disintegration during use without a real fix. With the reflective effect we can search for the target before propelling whomsoever we are sending after the point. I mean the Hoppers will be fine once we have that fix. With the key to the… the Doctor’s ship as our fixed point it gives the whole process stability.”

“Stability? That ship was way off sometimes and what do you mean ‘propelled’ exactly?” Mickey was quick to ask.

“Look… I did some drawings… here… it’s like a circle of mirrors... the centre of the circle would become a neutral point …” He continued to talk through the rough diagrams and Pete listened carefully. Rose observed them wondering who he thought would be going to find the Doctor and knowing that it could only really be one person.

“… so when I say propelled… I mean shot out of this universe much like being shot out of a cannon… a cannon that can target other dimensions…”

“A Dimension Cannon?” said Rose.

There was silence for a moment as Pete contemplated the diagrams and all that Bartholomew had said. Mickey said nothing.

“Alright… there’s no harm in you building it… but we’ re going to continue with the Hoppers, you can set up in the Wall Room, it’s the best space and unused… that alright Rose?”

“Yeah…” She hadn’t realised that she had been holding her breath until she let it out.

“But, Pete, the manpower?” complained Mickey, and it was Pete that actually turned on him this time.

“Mickey, I love you like a son, but your vision is completely clouded. We’re in crisis here… all hands on deck. It seems very feasible, this ‘Dimension Cannon’ and everything can be sourced right here… Bartholomew and Rose will take charge of constructing it and when it’s built… well, then we’ll see. But if you are going to continue to be pig headed about it all, then I might have to put you off duty.” Mickey didn’t reply, but after a beat he nodded and Pete turned back to Bartholomew. “Use what you need… plenty of equipment in storage… don’t worry about cost… time is what we have little of…”

 

**********

 

When they were alone again Rose broached the subject of exactly who he thought would be using the Dimension Cannon when it was built.

“Who?”

“Yup… who do you envisage we’ll be shooting off to find him?”

“I hadn’t really given it… oh… well what about Pete or Mickey… or Jake?”

“You know it has to be me, don’t you?”

“Why?”

“Cos I know him the best… he’ll listen to me… take me seriously. It has to be me.”

“But, how can I build it then... knowing that I am endangering you? I’ll go!”

“No… you won’t… you already said the key is hostile to you… what might the TARDIS think of you?”

“Rose…” His face was etched in desperation and acceptance.

“You just have to make sure that its safe and that you can bring me back, yeah?”

They were moving down to the laboratories as they were speaking, there was equipment and tools down there that were going to be needed.

“Never fails to affect me... head is already thumping…” he muttered as they approached.

“Maybe it’ll get better when we move up to the Wall Room?”

“What exactly is the Wall Room?”

“It’s the place where the void opened up last time… a massive room… I’ve hated that place for three years… suddenly it doesn’t seem so hopeless now…”

He didn’t get time to respond, they were through the lab door and the chaos within it.

Oliver Morgan was buzzing and rushed up to them as soon as they entered. “I think I might have found the right compound… look…” 

He had spent days working on the stick that wasn’t a stick and it had been his idea to finally merge the two parts together, since then the organic matter had been reacting in erratic and extreme ways. Oliver Morgan had been diligent and patient and it seemed he had found the answer.

“The reason we’re finding it so hard to compare is that it is not only alien, but it’s not even from this universe… but there is a material that I found record of… there was an alien vessel discovered just off the coast of Fiji… there was something similar to this growing on it… only similar in its make up and not a match… but look…”

Bartholomew moved over to the computer and observed the images upon it, then he looked through the microscope at the samples.

“Right… so we’re talking about some kind of alien…?”

“Some kind of alien coral by the looks of it…” answered Oliver eagerly.

It was Rose who needed to sit down suddenly this time.


	14. Chapter 14

It was the hardest couple of weeks that they went through in terms of working together and wanting each other but knowing they both felt they should wait until after they had tried to save the universes.

Working in close proximity to one another with little interruption and with the atmosphere so charged it was actually a wonder that they refrained from going the whole hog, although admittedly, there were a fair few near misses.

The Dimension Cannon took shape quickly after a lot of digging through miscellaneous buried artefacts in the storage containers below ground and a little more pilfering from the labs they began in earnest and he quickly found that Rose was a very willing and able advocate. In fact, it was quite a surprise to him how well they worked together and how much he seemed to know and took for granted. It was as if he was on some kind of automatic pilot.

There had been much discussion about the key and how it reacted to him, it had been placed under the same stringent tests that the piece of alien coral had been and although their make up was similar, it was also very different. A dead end had been agreed upon as the key was needed for Rose and Bartholomew’s venture.

The clothes that Bartholomew had turned up at the hospital in also had reached an unsatisfactory end. They were not of this current universe and held only their own secrets and there was nothing more they could do with them. 

The watch and the alien coral were still undergoing tests, the watch was stubbornly giving away nothing and the coral seemed to be evolving every day, its cells increasing and changing. It was fascinating and unanswerable.

Away from them, Bartholomew seemed to thrive, headaches banished to the lower floors. The Wall Room held no secrets as far as he was concerned and it was only the memory of loss that worried Rose. The idea of losing Bartholomew in a similar way played on her mind, but she didn’t let on to him. She knew they had to do this even though half of her just wanted to grab his hand and run.

They barely slept through all this and the Wall Room had become their temporary home. Pete sent a large, squashy corner sofa up from one of the many staff rooms in the building and any rest they had to take because they were dropping, was done on that. Bartholomew needed little sleep; his brain was working overtime in trying to get the Dimension Cannon right. But Rose would sometimes need a couple of hours to charge herself and he often found himself putting her to bed and pushing temptation to climb in with her aside.

It was sixteen days later that the Cannon was finished. All they needed was a guinea pig to check it was actually working. They had sent objects that had successfully dematerialised, but had no way of bringing them back as of yet.

“I trust it,” argued Rose, and Bartholomew looked weakly at her, shaking his head.

“Don’t say you’re just going to hop over without a proper safety test, Rose... just don’t…”

“Bartholomew…do we have a choice?”

“Choices… they’re overrated, you know?”

“It’s this or the Hoppers, but we have to find him… you know that as much as I do.” He didn’t answer and she found herself drawn into his arms. She snuggled in, inhaling him deeply wondering how long it would be before they could sort everything out and begin their life together properly.

Her phone buzzed impatiently on the desk and she picked it up without letting go of him.

“Mum again…” she whispered.

“You’d better talk to her; you can understand her being worried; she hasn’t seen you in three weeks…”

“Mum? Yeah, I know… I miss you too… nope… no, I can’t, we’re completely snowed under with it… what do you mean ‘something stupid’? No, you will not… well, Mickey had no right… no, he’s telling you one side of it… I’ll let you know everything when we’ve dealt with the problem… no, you have to stay put, Mum… I doubt you’d be let in anyway… I promise… no, really, I do… love you too… bye… bye.”

“She’s threatening to come here?”

“If she gets wind of this, then she will… she’d tear down the doors to get to me. Bloody Mickey, why does he have to be so awful about it?”

“What did he tell her?”

“Obviously, he can’t say much… official secrets act and all, and you come into that category at the moment… but he mentioned that I’m involved in the whole stars going out business and it was enough to get her hackles up…”

“She cares, that’s a wonderful thing, Rose… I’m looking forward to meeting her…”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, I’m nervous, worried about how she’ll react when she see’s who I look like, but to meet your family? Oh, Rose, it will mean so much to me!”

“You’re definitely not him, then, definitely…” 

“What?”

“Just a joke… s’alright… I’ll see her first, explain it all… soften the blow… she’ll get her head around it eventually.”

“But Mickey does seem to have it in for us…”

 

“Yeah… well, I’m sorry; I’ll deal with him when the time comes…”

“Don’t be too hard on him, I can only imagine what it would be like to lose you, Rose and that’s painful enough…”

“About this dimension jumping… you know I’ve done it before, when we came here… a couple of times… and that was with the Hopper’s. I have experience at it and I know the way the Cannon works… you know you’re going to have to just trust that I will take care…”

“We need to devise a signal… a probe that can travel with you, so that I can reverse the program… oh that’s it… we can just reverse it, twiddle it here and… hang on….” And he was back at it tinkering away at the control desk adjusting this and that. Rose watched him and was reminded of the man who shared his face wondering how she would feel when she laid eyes upon him again.

Another few days of testing went by and Pete was bought up to watch the results. Mickey’s absence was much noted and Bartholomew wondered if he had made the decision or whether he had been asked not to come.

The tennis ball looked tiny sitting in the midst of the large circle of mirrors and Pete looked decidedly unimpressed until the levers activated the machine and the tennis ball flickered out of existence.

“Right… but how do you know you haven’t just disintegrated it?” he asked after examining the spot where once it had sat.

“I’ll show you…” he answered, indicating Pete to move out of the circle. He fiddled with a dial and reset the lever. Rose wouldn’t have been surprised at this point if he had incorporated a rubber mallet to bash it with.

The tennis ball gradually reappeared, and Pete went back into the circle and picked it up. “An inanimate object… what about something with living cells? And how can we tell where it’s been?”

Rose wordlessly picked up the cage with the fluffy white rabbit in and placed it at Pete’s feet, then they both walked out of the circle once more and once more the Dimension Cannon was activated.

“A white rabbit?” Pete asked Rose as an aside. 

Rose shrugged. “Wanted to use a mammal, easy enough to examine, the cage was small enough to go with it…”

“Cage?”

“We lost three to begin with, it took a while to realise they probably wandered off…”

The rabbit disappeared and then reappeared, looking none the worse for its ordeal but obviously in need of a drink as it took to the connected bottle immediately.

“But how do you know where it’s been? Could’ve been anywhere!”

“This is true… the settings are as best as we can make them without someone on the other end to tell us different. When I get there I’ll have to get in touch with Unit or Torchwood if they still have one and then the fix will be set.”

“So when do you plan on going?”

“Tomorrow… I want a night at home and then we’ll start the jumps in the morning…”

Bartholomew nodded feebly, unable to tell them that the drumming heartbeat in his head had started again and this time it was very much stronger and very much louder.


	15. Chapter 15

Rose could see how tired and withdrawn he was as they travelled back to her flat. There was no question of him going to his little box down the road; she assumed he would be with her and he assumed to follow.

“Your headache back?” she asked softly as she fished around for her key in her bag.

“Sort of… just the blood flow, stress I expect, from the worry…” he answered her with barely any volume, and she nodded gently before opening the door to the flat they hadn’t seen in nearly three weeks.

He stood awkwardly, trying to find the words to plead with her, to beg her not to go. He found nothing and she looked at him quizzically.

“Listen, I want you here for the night, but it doesn’t mean we have to do… well, you know… I mean it isn’t like I’m going forever, is it?”

“I don’t… what?” He couldn’t comprehend what she was digging at; the drumming was interfering with his concentration.

“I didn’t bring you back to have my wicked way with you although it does sound lovely… no... I just wanted us together tonight… without any distractions and you need some rest, proper rest…” He was looking at her with an expression of exhausted, wistful hunger, but he didn’t seem to be able to find the words he wanted to say.

“If you don’t come back…” he started eventually.

“I will, you’ll make sure of it…” she interrupted.

“I couldn’t bear it, Rose… to have come this far and found you above everything else and to lose you? What would life be worth then?”

“Don’t talk like that… I can’t bear to hear you say such things… life is worth it, of course it is! Life is a miracle and you know what I learnt when I met you?”

“What?”

“There is always hope… and there is… I love you Bartholomew, only you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you… nobody ever knows how long that sort of forever is… and even if it was just what we’ve had, it was worth it… worth having met you and if I lost you, I would spend the rest of my life trying to get back to you… that’s how much you mean to me...”

“But isn’t that the way you felt about him?”

“Honestly? I don’t know… we never got that far… truly it was different; we were never evenly matched… I cared a great deal for him and he for me… but whether there was any future for us as a couple… I really don’t know. And I missed him so much, missed him every day until I met you… and now it’s you… you’re the one that I want.”

“You don’t care about him anymore?”

“Course I care; and I want to see him again… I want to know he’s okay… I want to tell him all about you… I want him to help me understand who you are, cos there’s no denying you’re a mystery and one I think only he can figure out…”

“You think I’m something to do with him?”

“That isn’t why I fell for you… but that said and while we’re being honest… it was so magnetic, never experienced anything like it… I think your answers are there… they have to be.”

“And if the universes weren’t in danger, would you still be searching for my answers?”

“Are you angry? I mean, whatever my history, the truth is simple; I want you with or without a memory. No, I wouldn’t risk the walls of reality just to ask him.”

“Rose… I’m not angry, I have no right to be angry, I’m exhausted and sort of feeling like you may have bought me here like a soldier brings home a new wife the night before he goes off to war…”

Rose grinned wickedly and shook her head. “Can’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind… but it was being together that was important… and away from all that. Go on… shower and bed; I’ll rustle us up something to eat…”

After he had disappeared wearily into the bathroom, she remained staring at the door for some time, her eyebrows meeting together as she gathered her thoughts. Eventually she wandered into the kitchen and put the kettle on before gazing into the fridge she hadn’t replenished for over three weeks.

It was a while before she took the tray out and went on a mini search about the flat. He was still fully clothed and fast asleep on her bed. She touched his face, noting that he felt a little warm and then she set the tray down and curled up beside him. It was a while before she drifted off.

****

The cold light of day beginning to sift its way through the uncovered windows disturbed him and he woke with a start. He stared right into Rose’s sleeping face and studied it for some time, trying to memorise every feature to his memory.

He didn’t feel very relaxed after the hours of sleep his body had given way to, in fact he felt as if he had wasted precious time together unconscious and the fear that had gripped him yesterday had deepened.

He felt as if he were sending her away either to her death or back into the arms of the man she truly loved and either way was soul destroying for him. 

But she had promised, hadn’t she? He wondered if any promise could really be kept, sometimes things just couldn’t be helped. Surely most promises were empty if you thought about it?

“Penny for ‘em?” her voice made him jump and he looked into her heavy lidded, sleep-filled eyes and felt his heart crack just slightly.

“I think you know…” he answered softly, and she moved closer to him, so close that their noses were practically touching.

“Yeah… enough worrying… let’s get it over with so we can get on with our fantastic life together, alright?” 

He stared deeply into the abyss of the amber eyes that were nearly out of focus for being to close and pulled her to him. She sighed happily and nuzzled into him.

They held each other like this for a long while before simultaneously rousing themselves and preparing to face the biggest day they had faced together yet.

****

Rose looked so tiny standing in the middle of the circle of mirrors, his head thumped and his heart ached as he set the dials to his calculations.

Pete was with him as he showed him step by step how to operate the cannon. He had gone through the inner workings thoroughly with Rose and was confident she could even rebuild it if the need arose.

Their eyes were locked but words had run out, they had said their goodbyes and sworn their promises and now it was pure fear that wrought between them. His head hammered as he set the switches and dials while still managing to give Pete the running commentary.

They watched as Rose lit up for a brief moment before disappearing.

Bartholomew fell forwards, gripping the control desk tightly, finally giving out to the insistent drumming and now something new within. Something seemed to be calling him. It was all he could do to stay where he was. It seemed something was trying to pull him away, and he fought against it as he waited for the agreed half hour to pass.


	16. Chapter 16

Rose reappeared after the allotted half hour looking a little disorientated, and gasping for a drink. Pete handed her a long, cool glass, which she downed in one.

“Where were you?” he asked after she had got her breath. Bartholomew said nothing as he waited for her story.

“I was there and I know the TARDIS was nearby, but something was wrong… I wasn’t drawn to him, it was a… a woman… and it was too soon… the sky was full of stars… something wasn’t quite…” Rose was shaking, her hands unable to stay still, and Bartholomew sat her down, enfolding her into his arms to quell her tremors.

“It’s too dangerous, we can’t fix on any time, it has to be the right time… did you speak to this woman? What did she say?”

“Woman?” Rose stared at him blankly and looked as if she were trying to remember a fading dream.

“The redhead?”

“Did I say she had red hair?” Rose suddenly pulled herself back and looked at him suspiciously.

“You did, didn’t you?”

“No, she didn’t…” Pete answered softly.

“Was she?”

“Was she what?”

“Ginger…”

“Yes… she was… how did you know?”

“I don’t know… a guess?” Rose stared at him hard for some time before refocussing herself.

“Right… well, we haven’t time to discuss it… you need to adjust the settings just slightly and I’ll be off again…”

“No… not today, Rose... we have a fix on that parallel… you need to rest!”

“I need to find the Doctor before our world is swallowed up by The Darkness!” she snapped and instantly regretted it. Bartholomew drew back from her, nodded and moved to the controls again.

“He’s not right…” Pete muttered to her gently, “looks ill to me…”

“Well, you know what to do if it comes to it… he’s shown you… just have to hope that I find the Doctor before its too late…”

“Your Mum’s been ringing… threatening to come down here again…”

“I spoke to her yesterday.”

“I know, but she’s got wind of something, very intuitive when it comes to you, is Jackie…”

“Where’s Mickey?”

“In the lab, I’ve asked him to remain out of this… it makes him too volatile…” Rose nodded and looked back at Bartholomew who was still very pointedly fiddling with the controls. She moved over to him.

“Listen… I’m sorry… I’m worried, we’re all worried… and I’m worried about you too… this place is no good for you… quicker we get the job done, the quicker we can get out of here.”

“Yeah… I know… it’s all so very… tense…” he replied after a pause and he turned to look into her worried eyes.

“We’ll go away somewhere after this is all over… just you’n me, yeah? But we have to do this, you know we do?”

“It doesn’t stop me worrying…”

“Quite right too… and ditto…”

“It’s the most harrowing thing I could think of, seeing you disappear before my eyes and knowing I’m the only person who can bring you back… what if it goes wrong?”

“We have to try…” He stared into her face and pulled her slowly into his arms. Pete cleared his throat and tried to look as if he wasn’t there. They turned to him and he looked even more embarrassed.

“Ready?” he asked, and they let each other go reluctantly.

“You’re perfectly comfortable with it?”

“It’s not the best of feelings… and I arrived running… the dehydration is the worst though… my tongue’s all dry…”

“There is something we could try giving you for that… it’s used to promote saliva in gravity sickness victims, but it would certainly help…” said Pete. After a brief discussion about the drug, Pete left for the med bay, leaving them alone.

“Rose, I…”

“We can’t keep saying goodbye as if it’s the last time, Bartholomew… I love you and I’m coming back... one way or another… I’m coming back…” 

There was no more use for words, so they walked back into each other’s arms and held each other tightly as they waited for Pete to return.

He took very little time to get back and knocked before entering, which amused Rose no end as she could only imagine how her mother would take the circumstances if she discovered them like this.

All too quickly for him, Rose was back inside the circle and he was sending her away again, their eyes remained glued to one another’s as she disappeared for the second time.

“Bartholomew, you look awful…” Pete addressed him after what seemed like an age.

“My head… I feel like I’m being ripped away myself…”

“Do you take anything for the pain?”

“No… I seem to have allergies to common or garden stuff… usually a lie down in the dark… but this place… and Rose gone… it all adds up… must be stress… the blood pumps around my system and I can hear it doing it…”

“You should sit down. What would I say to Rose if she came back and you had had a heart attack?”

“I won’t… we have to wait…”

“Half an hour?”

“Twenty seven minutes and twelve seconds…”

But it wasn’t. When they reversed the system to call her back, something was wrong and all that appeared after many attempts was a rather disgruntled looking white rabbit.

Bartholomew fiddled and tried again, he felt like his head was going to explode and the thing that had called him, that had tried to pull him before was dragging at his insides.

Pete was panicking, and the shouting in the corridor helped neither of them. Rose was gone, and they couldn’t get a fix on her at all.

“Show me, Mickey… take me to my daughter, or so help me, God, I’ll tear this place apart!”

“Jackie…” Pete said, looking aghast as the doors flew open and the irate blonde stood in the doorway, Mickey desperately trying to stop her.

“This is a restricted area, Jackie, you could get us arrested…” protested Mickey but too late. Jackie saw Pete and Bartholomew, and her eyes rounded.

“I might ‘ave bleedin’ known it… you!” She stormed up to him, a look of contempt on her face. “Where is she, what have you done?” she demanded.

“Jackie...” Pete put a hand on her arm and she rounded on him.

“She’s my daughter, Pete, what were you thinking? Where is she?”

“Gone…” said Bartholomew softly, morosely.

“Gone? Gone where… I’ll give you bleedin’ gone!” And with that, she slapped Bartholomew hard across the face.

The world went black.

****

It was some time before Pete and Mickey met back in the lab.

“Anything?”

“Searched high and low, not a trace…” replied Mickey almost triumphantly.

“I’ll have your job for this, Mickey!”

“I was right though… he wasn’t what you thought!”

“I don’t know what I thought!”

“Sir…” It was Caroline that interrupted them and Oliver was hovering behind her looking agitated.

“What?” Pete was short with her and instantly regretted it, he was never usually that sort of man, but his wife was upstairs in hysterics threatening all sorts as a nurse tried to calm her.

“The items that we’ve been testing… the watch… the alien coral?”

“What of them?”

“They’ve gone… vanished during the blackout.”

“But they can’t have just… disappeared!” 

No one seemed to notice Mickey move to a desk and pick up a couple of items from it, nor did they see him leave the room without a backward glance.

“The alien coral was locked in the fusion chamber and that hasn’t been interfered with… and we had just literally made headway with the watch…”

“What headway… what do you mean?”

“The carving… it turns out it was some kind of alien writing… the translator suddenly found a programme to convert it to the nearest English possible…”

“What do you mean suddenly… what did it say?”

“Just literally before the blackout, seconds before the blackout, the words seemed to just unscramble themselves…”

“And what did they seem to say?”

“They said ‘give me my birthright’…”


	17. Chapter 17

At first she was confused, not understanding quite what had happened to her during the jump but very aware that something was a little off. The feeling that she had been pulled slightly off course wouldn’t leave her as she wandered the London streets looking for the Doctor.

It was Christmas and there was mayhem all about. The night sky looked somehow wrong to her, a person who had been studying the stars for a few weeks now. There were more stars in the sky than her present world and less than the last jump she had done to her former one.

The spider’s web space ship in the sky stopped her in her tracks as she tried to decipher exactly where it was hovering. Deciding it was above a part of the Thames she knew, she raced towards it, calculating that the Doctor would be at the epicentre of any trouble.

In the distance as she ran downhill towards a group of military vehicles, she saw the redheaded woman again and this only confirmed her doubts that something wasn’t quite right. It was too much of a coincidence, almost as if the TARDIS was trying to send her a message. And, as she ran, she knew something was very, very wrong.

She came to a skidding halt as she drew nearer. “What happened, what did they find? I’m sorry, but… did they find someone?” she panted, seeing the amount of military activity going on behind her.

“I don’t know. Bloke called the Doctor or something.” The redhead’s voice was gruff, abrupt.

“Where is he?” The hope in her heart hung heavy as she waited for this woman to answer her.

“They took him away, he’s dead… Sorry, did you know him? I mean, it could be any doctor…”

“…I came so far.” Disbelief swarmed over her, a mixed bag of feelings and not understanding how this could have happened threatened to drown her.

“Could be anyone…” 

This just wasn’t right… and what was it about this redhead, the one that always seemed to be right where she was headed? She studied her carefully. There was something off about her, something a little out of sync. Rose had had some experience of perception filters and there appeared (or didn’t appear) to be something clinging onto this woman. Something out of the ordinary. The key hanging around her neck heated her skin. She refused to believe that the Doctor was dead, he just couldn’t be; it didn’t make any sense.

“What’s your name?”

“Donna. And you?”

“I’m just… passing by, I’m not… I shouldn’t even be here. This is wrong. This is so wrong. What was it, sorry, Donna what?”

“Why d’you keep looking at my back?”

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are. You keep looking behind me, you’re doing it now. What is it? What’s there? Has someone put something on my back?” Donna moved her head from left to right trying to look behind her at an invisible object. As she did this, a large covered truck passed close by, Rose saw a glimpse of dark blue panelled wood under the tarpaulin.

The familiar drag in her stomach filled her with relief, Bartholomew was bringing her home.

When Donna looked back around, it was as if Rose had never been there.

But, of course, Rose didn’t find herself back with Bartholomew at all, no, she found herself on a darkened TARDIS console room floor, as if the dying ship had called out to its one time wolf.

A shiver went up her spine as she felt the vessel move, not as it had once driven them through the vortexes of time and space, but upon the back of a Unit transporter.

It was some time before she was aware that they had stopped, that the blue box was lifted off and that someone was trying to force their way in.

Fury overpowered her misery and she stormed to the doors wrenched them open and ordered that the group outside to stop.

Within ten minutes she was standing in Captain Erisa Magambo’s office trying to avoid a paradox at all costs. She had worked out by now that a parallel had somehow been created and it was something to do with this Donna woman. All she needed was some time and space to think and work out what to do. At least she had the TARDIS with her, albeit a very weak TARDIS that quite obviously knew it didn’t belong here.

Remembering the black wallet she had carefully put in her jacket pocket, she took it out and within moments Captain Magambo was saluting.

“That isn’t necessary… no, don’t…” Rose said uncomfortably. As a high ranking member of Torchwood it never failed to embarrass her when members of Unit saluted. But she was used to dealing with them.

“Unit is at your disposal…. Ms..?”

“Best not… under cover and all that… I want to spend some time in the TARDIS, work out a plan of action… that all right?”

“Of course… and your lot, Captain Harkness, you want them informed?”

“Jack? Now I know I’m on another dimension… no, best keep me well undercover for now…”

“Yes, ma’am…” Rose looked uncomfortable at the salute that followed this address.

**********

The TARDIS rumbled gently and Rose wandered around it, a shiver running through her. Now she had the time to really see what damage had been done to the beautiful ship and it bought tears to her eyes.

It had been water logged, but more than that, something she had seen before… it was struggling to deal with the atmosphere it was in. She remembered the first time she had found her present home dimension, how the TARDIS had reacted to that world and her heart ached.

Somewhere in this building a version of the Doctor lay in a morgue, she knew it wasn’t actually ‘Him’, as he would put it, but what if by some cruel blow it was Bartholomew, what if fate had decided to lead her here in this way?

“Erisa?” she spoke through an intercom on her wrist.

“Ma’am?”

“I need to see him…”

“I was just about to come and inform you…”

“What?”

“The Doctor’s… his body… it’s gone…”

“Gone?”

“Just disappeared...” Rose didn’t answer this, she let go of the button and stared hard at the console wondering whether this was good or bad news and not knowing how to feel about it at all. 

Her hands wandered idly over the unlit controls and she delighted in the response she was getting from the TARDIS.

“You have to help… I don’t know enough… you want me to work it out, but I can’t… not without your help… “

The TARDIS rumbled weakly, and Rose took her hand off the console, sat down in the pilot’s seat and lost herself in her thoughts.

After a while, she opened up the laptop she had perused from Captain Magambo and opened up a blank page. Gradually she began to outline from memory the blue print to reconstruct another Dimension Cannon. Bartholomew had told her to try and remember every detail as a safety precaution. Her eyes stung with tears she daren’t shed as she imagined what he was going through right now. She had promised him and look at what had happened.

A pale, flashing light caught her eye, and she looked at the screen on the console. It was a tiny pinprick, a cursor in the darkness, but undeniably it was there.

“Help me…” she typed, but there was no response and after a while her words faded, leaving the flickering cursor on its own again.

“Show me…” she typed after a while. There was a long pause.

“Show you what?” The words came up slowly and Rose thought for a long moment.

“Who is Donna?”

“Who is Donna who?”

“Donna who has… who had something to do with the Doctor… long red hair, abrupt, something on her back...”

“Donna Noble is out of her timeline…”

“What?”

“I cannot show you… she is out of her timeline…”

“Show me her true timeline then…” 

“The timelines must be read…”

“What happened to the Doctor?”

“The Doctor is lost…”

“You mean dead?”

“No…”

“But he drowned…”

“He was never there to drown… he cannot be here…” Rose remembered something the Doctor had said a long time ago, something along the lines that there couldn’t be Time Lords on parallel dimensions.

“So what happened?” she typed, and it was ages before her answer slowly began to appear.

“Donna Noble is nowhere… Donna Noble has been tricked… the parallel that Donna Noble believes herself within is not real.”

Rose sat back and thought for a long while, she was beginning to get it.

“I need to read Donna Noble’s timelines, can you show me?”

“It could be attempted…”

It was some time later that Rose reported back to Captain Magambo.

“But, I don’t see what this Noble woman has to do with anything… there are no reports that she even knew the Doctor…”

“No that would be because her timeline has been tampered with… and we have to put it right… we have to find her and reverse it. The Doctor should never have drowned under the Thames because Donna Noble must have stopped him. In the world she believes herself in she never met him, we have to go back and make her meet him.”

“How do you propose we do that?”

So Rose took her through the crude workings of the Dimension Cannon with the blue prints on the laptop to go by.

“But we have no guarantees that this one won’t send you somewhere else, another parallel?”

“I think we rather do… we have the TARDIS.”

“But it’s dead.”

“No, she isn’t… dying, but still hanging in there and willing to help… she will die if we don’t and then all will be lost… we connect her to a Dimension Cannon and we would have the accuracy we were lacking before.”

They began the job within the hour, Rose taking charge but with a team of the finest scientists in the world to help.

They studied Donna Noble’s movements and soon found that she seemed to be flickering on a join between worlds, this made it hard to pinpoint her at times but they were going to use the Dimension Cannon for this when it was ready so they didn’t need to track her down in the traditional way. It would be too dangerous to do it that way, the fear of fixed points being created was paramount.

It was a matter of hours rather than days that they were ready for the first jump and Rose was keen to get going immediately. She was worried that Bartholomew might start jumping all over the universes looking for her. The problem needed resolving as quickly as possible.

 

The strange happenings around the Hope Hospital set bells off in Rose’s head…. She knew, just knew that if he had been there all those people would have somehow been saved… this was the time she should make contact with Donna again and she should warn her in some way about the next Christmas because if Donna Noble died… all would be lost.

The raffle ticket was a stroke of pure luck, something someone said in passing about crossing timelines and generally travelling in time. Rose remembered that the Doctor frequently used the lottery as a way to alter those he felt might benefit from it in the future. A little raffle ticket for a nice weekend away would do it, nothing too adventurous, just enough.

The blast was less vigorous than the previous one although she was still propelled into the future of this semi-dimension.

It was Donna who heard her arrive and Donna who came to investigate.

“Blimey, are you alright? What was that, fireworks or…?” She stopped and looked down the alley where Rose had shot out of.

“Woo… I dunno. I was just walking along… weird…”

“You’re the one who… Christmas Eve, I met you in town.”

“That’s right, Donna, isn’t it?”

“What was your name?”

“Bit of a coincidence. Small world! How are you? You’re looking good. It’s been ages. How’s things? What you been up to?” Rose was drawn to the creature she could sense that clung to Donna’s back and Donna noticed. The faint clicking suddenly clear.

“You’re doing it again…”

“What?”

“Looking behind me. People keep on doing that. Looking at my back.”

“What sort of people?”

“People in the street. Strangers. I just catch them, sometimes. Staring at me. Like they can see something. And I get home and I look and there’s nothing there…” Donna craned her neck to try and see as the clicking noise got a little louder. “D’you see? Now I’m doing it?”

“What are you doing for Christmas?” Rose asked suddenly, changing tack.

“What am I what?” asked Donna stunned at this.

“Next Christmas, any plans?”

“I dunno, that’s ages away! Nothing much, I suppose, why?”

“You should get out of town. Don’t stay in London. You and your family, just leave the city.”

“What for?”

“Nice hotel. Christmas holiday.”

“Can’t afford it.”

“You’ve got that raffle ticket.”

“How d’you know about that?”

“First prize, luxury weekend break. Use it, Donna Noble.”

“Why don’t you tell me your name?” Rose didn’t answer, the tug of the cannon beginning to pull her and Donna looked hurt, angry, confused. “I think you should leave me alone.” She turned away, frightened, and didn’t see Rose beginning to disappear as she walked back into the alley.

And so it went on, Rose made a few jumps into this parallel of Donna Noble’s, but really she was playing a waiting game. Donna’s life was deteriorating in front of her and it was just a matter of time before she agreed with Rose and decided that she should alter the path of her life.

When the stars began to disappear Donna was finally convinced and Rose was there to guide her through the end of her nightmare. She felt so wrong watching Donna Noble die, but deep down she knew that this poor woman’s future was already set out in every universe.

The timelines were beginning to unfold.

Donna Noble succeeded. She made the right turn instead of the wrong and Rose was with her on the road just as she had been with her own real father as he took his last breaths.

Everything was back on track and she was able to use the secondary dimension cannon to be sent hurtling into her original universe but not before she had been equipped with a communicative device and a very large gun.

“Right, now we’re in trouble…”


	18. Chapter 18

The Darkness engulfed them, almost as if time had stopped and everything had become suddenly very clear to him in the void that time and the powers he was now aware of had created him.

He did what he remembered doing best and with as much desperation as he could muster in the suffocating silence, the blackness that this strange world was now coated in. 

He ran. 

He ran as fast and as far as he could remembering how he had happened here and where he needed... so needed… to be.

Everything he had brought with him, all possessions that had been clues, were keys to unlock the memories, the short scary memory of his existence that by his own calculations hadn’t quite happened yet.

He ran towards the tiny scrap of memory for fear of being too late for the very beginning.

 

**********

 

Jackie was livid, patronised and scared. Her beautiful Rose was gone again and that man, the man who always made her gone was here again and Pete… Pete was standing by him? What the hell was going on? 

She told the nurse to get lost, refused the drugs and fought as hard as she could. The Darkness held her down but for a moment. Somehow, although the world seemed to stop, she was able to fight the confusion and function in almost a slow motion trance-like way .

Mickey was by her side, handing her some kind of weapon, torch flickering in and out of existence and one of those dimension hopper thingies at the ready.

She didn’t think, didn’t stop to think about the life she had forged here, her mind was set on Rose and the universe they had come from, the reality that was her true dimension seemed the only real thing.

They were gone in an instant, her and Mickey. Only when they arrived in a darkened street with two great big Daleks threatening them did the reality of her actions hit her. Pete and Tony… her boys, she had left them, just like that… without a second glance back. Was that how easy it was?

And then, of course, this reality took over.

 

**********

 

It was strange how selective dimensions could be, for although she forged the secondary dimension cannon in Donna’s false world it survived in this universe. For this she was thankful but locating the Doctor was not as easy as it should have been. It was almost as if they were dancing around one another.

But gradually, the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle began to merge and the path to the Doctor became clearer.

It was a battle ground, this proper dimension that she was setting foot upon in order to find the answers for her future in another and yet as she caught sight of him, at the bottom of the road talking to Donna, wonderful alive, tragic Donna Noble… it didn’t stop her feeling as she always had and the joy at seeing him, her Doctor once again, clouded everything.

The running was always, and always would be, exhilarating even if they were running towards one another and not away from something scary and dangerous.

The smile on his face betrayed his true feelings, it always had and always would but oh, the mistakes that can be made when emotions cloud the mind! The monster they should have been running from was there, ready and waiting just as it always was and would be.

The bubble bursts very quickly in this in and out breath-stealing world they frequent and a dying Doctor in any shape or form was not anything she wanted to endure and she knew what was coming even with Jack there and Donna in such panic. 

If he changed at this point her questions could never be answered, she didn’t know how she knew this, but she knew it.

And as miracles tend to happen in their world he must have known it too. He performed something strange and new and different and he was still him, still really him.

She didn’t have time to ask, to think about asking, the adventure wasn’t over yet.

When another Doctor ran from the TARDIS she nearly laughed out loud. It seemed this face was never going to be entirely original, was it? Including the Doctor that never really existed in Donna’s false world that tallied a count of four.

The three of them working together, The Doctor Donna and the two Doctors was truly magnificent to see and after, as they took the Earth home she observed the people around her and she knew that she was never going to get all the answers she needed. Jack was a whole new conundrum. He wasn’t right, didn’t feel right, couldn’t be right… right?

So to be faced with what she was being faced with on that beach where she had broken all those years ago seemed harder again.

She had let the Doctor go that day and although she had never quite got over him, she hadn’t banked on being landed with a needy replica of him. She had a future somewhere in this dimension she now believed was home. How could she get on with the rest of her life if the past kept pulling her back?

And on top of all she was feeling, there was the Doctor’s pain too. She could practically touch it and, like a dream, she felt herself going through it, like a wound that would never quite heal. 

She didn’t have the answers, but she really needed them and everything just seemed to be more complicated than ever.

“But, the Doctor… he’s you…”

“He needs you, that’s very me….”

“And you… Doctor… how was that sentence going to end?”

And then this new Doctor leaned into her, threw her that lifeline and whispered the words that she so needed to hear.

“It’s okay, Rose… I am Bartholomew Smith…”


	19. Chapter 19

I still don’t get it…”

“Does it really matter?”

“Don’t you go all Doctory on me Bartholomew… how… you have to tell me… how?”

“Doctory… I like that… I mean, I _am_ him so it stands to reason…” They were lying in the semi-darkness of the hotel room in Bergen, their wet clothes were discarded on an equally drenched bathroom floor and they both wore warm white fluffy hotel bathrobes, their damp hair scraped back. They lay face to face hardly daring to bridge the gap between one another.

“Changing the subject… waffling on… Bartholomew… you were here before any of this happened… please explain…. Now!”

“You sound like your Mother…” They were quiet as they listened to the raised voices in the neighbouring room… Pete was furious and Jackie’s pleading whine was almost pitiful.

“I wonder if they’ll get over this…” Rose breathed out as she unconsciously bit at her lip, doing things to Bartholomew that she was totally unaware of.

“Course they will… made for each other them two… she might be a little more understanding in the future, though… you know… about us.”

“Us?”

“Yes… when we take off… I mean, is that too assuming? You want to, don’t you?”

“You’re doing it again… how… that’s all I’m asking… tell me how!”

“Well… there are many ways to travel… used to have a fantastic yellow car… Bessie… she got me around when I was without the TARDIS quite splendidly… then there are the possibilities that happen… I mean anything is achievable when it comes to my brilliant mind… who knows what this universe has to offer someone like me? Wasn’t Oz another dimension… there may very well be ruby slippers…”

“Shut up. That wasn’t what I meant and well you know it… although… ruby slipper… there’s a thought…”

“Somehow I don’t think it’s quite the same thought…”

“Why are you so good at going off on tangents?”

“Been doing it long enough… part of me, I s’pose…” There was a silence between them as they studied each other’s faces and then he wriggled a tiny, minute bit closer to her.

“Oh no, you don’t… not until I get some explanations… that’s a whole other tangent and I don’t want you using it to wheedle your way out of this…”

“Wheedle?” he moved a little closer.

“Yes… exactly that… you arrived in this dimension, badly burned and in such a state, out of your mind and not really that long after I got here… something obviously went very wrong… you have all your memories back… what have you got to hide from me now?”

“Nothing to hide… its just too mundane… complicated… too… painful…”

“Painful?” He nodded by way of answer and she stared into the fathomless pit of his even darker eyes. Eventually he sighed and began.

“If I must… if it needs saying…”

“Not even a little funny…” Rose pulled back from him, lip pouting and it was all he could do to stop himself from tasting it.

“Sorry… that was in poor taste… listen, Rose, do you remember what happened on the Games Station?”

“Course I remember… that was the day you first changed…”

“Before that…”

“Daleks?”

“Do the words Bad Wolf mean anything?”

“Yes… I do sort of know… it hurts to think of it, but yeah…”

“You still get headaches?”

“No… God no, he… you made sure of that… the fact that I lost you makes me sad and then there’s… Jack…”

“Mmm… well, yes, that’s a whole other story… another time… what I was trying to get at was how you felt when you and the TARDIS were…”

“One?”

“Yeah…” Rose reached out and took his hand, their fingers playing in and out of one another’s both of them revelling in how well they fitted together.

“I dunno… it comes to me in flashes… I remember an incredible feeling of power… like I could do anything… I remember wanting to protect all I loved more than my life was worth… but the most of it is gone… s’pose it would kill me if I did?”

“Yes… but that moment, when the time vortex and you became one… you could do anything… be anywhere and everywhere… all was possible when you were the Bad Wolf… So, when the TARDIS was sinking into that boiling pit of Z-neutrino energy and when Donna… when Donna set off the Meta-crisis in panic… there was this moment… you know… it was like when I regenerated in the past almost… like everything in all creation was mine to bend… and I knew I shouldn’t… really knew it was against all the rules… but I thought of you… wanted you safe with me… it was the human in me, I suppose… and then the TARDIS in distress locked onto something it recognised and sent me out, wanted to save me… it was a few seconds in front of Donna, but years that I was gone…”

“Where did you end up?”

“This is where it really does get a little mixed up… I mean, I ended up here, obviously, it was the call of another that set her off… she reacted to the call of another TARDIS and sent me there… but I couldn’t remember anything… just trees and a storm… must have hit my head… but I can remember ending up at the Asylum… I was madly searching for something and I didn’t know what for…”

“…me?”

“I think it must have been…” There was a moment’s thoughtful silence.

“But you did remember… when the Darkness came… when Mum hit you?”

“Not entirely, I think my senses went haywire…. I was pulled away from that place… taken back…”

“But all the things… the watch, the clothes… everything that you bought here disappeared too… you didn’t take it?”

“I don’t remember…”

“So… what you do know of all this is that while the proper TARDIS was… was… making you… you were pushed out and pulled into this dimension by another one… one that's here? Oh, my God, but you said there were no Time Lords here…. How could there be another TARDIS? Where is it? And who the hell does it belong to?”

“I’m not sure… but it certainly seemed to have connections with what you call the ‘proper’ TARDIS…”

“And that’s really all you know?”

“Pretty much… there are theories and certainly we’ll have to search for it…”

“This was supposed to be an explanation and you said it was sad… what’s so sad about it?”

“The watch is rather unusual… it holds something rather important inside it… the life force of the Time Lord that belongs to that other TARDIS…”

“Life force?”

“Rose… this is why I was avoiding it all… each thing leads to more questions and I just want to be here, not in memories and suppositions… we have plenty of time to try and work it out… it’s sad because the watch contains, in effect, the soul of a Time Lord and said Time Lord doesn’t even know it, believes him or herself human, that is if they aren’t dead… see, it beggar’s belief… and this is supposed to be our big reunion… our special moment… it brings it all very down!” He sat up abruptly and Rose grabbed at him, tried to pull him back.

“The truth is never easy, Bartholomew… but its very necessary…” He turned to face her, a small smile forming on his lips.

“You still calling me that?”

“Your name, isn’t it?” He stared at her for some time and then pulled himself up off the bed and began to pace in the white fluffy bathrobe, which was almost amusing despite his serious expression.

 

“Is it? I mean I grabbed the name off a lunatics asylum sign… I used to be the Doctor… oh God… I don’t know who I am!” He stopped at the foot of the bed, his face contorted with panic and Rose jumped up, diving at him.

“Maybe time sent you here to find me just so you would know who you were in this new… skin? I fell in love with you even though I knew you weren’t quite the Doctor… with all the Doctor taken out of you… Bartholomew was the man I fell for…” She pulled him into her arms and crushed herself against him. His arms wound themselves tightly around her not allowing one atom of air between them.

Eventually they pulled back and looked at each other.

“So… I’m Bartholomew, then?”

“There’s no complaint from me… none at all…” He bent his head low and kissed her surprised mouth.

“Right... and now?”

“Still Bartholomew… maybe with a little Doctor thrown in!”

“I didn’t mean that, Rose… I mean what happens now?”

“Now… well, I suppose, when we get back, we’ll have to start a full blown TARDIS hunt… and possibly a hidden Time Lord hunt too…” Two large fingers closed over her mouth and silenced her.

“Rose… I meant… what happens... right… now?” His hand left her mouth and joined the other at the towelling belt of her robe. 

It was a beat before said robe was at her ankles and all she wore was a triumphant smile.

As they made there way back onto the bed, Bartholomew was dimly aware of the faint hum that came from deep within his blue jacket pocket that hung dripping from a chair.

It seemed the watch was ready...


End file.
